ERIC ANDERSON lives with his family in Elyria, Ohio. He says, “The pronunciation of ‘Elyria’ is a cross between ‘delirium’ and ‘malaria,’ which is a pretty fitting description of August in Ohio.”

ROY ARENELLA lives in New York City, where he worked in social services for thirty years. His photography has been published in the New York Times, Popular Photography, and the Village Voice.

RITA BERNSTEIN is a former civil-rights lawyer who fantasizes about being a veterinarian or a neuroscientist. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

JAMES CARROLL lives in New York City.

WILLIAM CARTER plays the clarinet and chairs the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation. His new book of photographs, Causes and Spirits, will be published by Steidl in 2010. He lives in Los Altos Hills, California.

ALAN DAVIS grew up in Louisiana, where, according to a sign in front of  Poche’s Market, “everything on a hog is good.” He now lives in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he teaches in the mfa program at Minnesota State University and serves as senior editor of New Rivers Press. He is the author of two story collections, Rumors from the Lost World and Alone with the Owl (both New Rivers Press), and has recently completed a third.

SUSI EGGENBERGER likes to hike the hut-to-hut system in the White Mountains and float on Daicey Pond in Baxter State Park. She lives in Arundel, Maine.

ANDREW E. ESCHBACHER travels the U.S. to photograph the “discarded buildings of America’s past.” He lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

GLORIA BAKER FEINSTEIN is the author of two books of photographs: Convergence and Among the Ashes (both Yellow Bird Press). She lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

MARTHA GIES is the author of Up All Night (Oregon State University Press). She teaches creative writing in Veracruz, Mexico, and in Portland, Oregon, where she lives.

KARI HAGA is in search of the smoothest river rock that water has ever produced. She lives in Billings, Montana.

TAMA HOCHBAUM lives with her husband and two children in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she cooks, sings, and plays guitar.

VALERIE HURLEY was once a secretary who answered children’s mail to Dr. Seuss. She is the author of St. Ursula’s Girls against the Atomic Bomb (Plume) and lives in Charlotte, Vermont.

R.A. McBRIDE is working on a book of photographs about San Francisco movie theaters. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

LAURA NOEL dislikes being photographed but endures it so as not to be hypocritical. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

JOHN POCH’s latest poetry collection is titled Two Men Fighting with a Knife (Story Line Press), and he recently finished a short-story collection for which he is seeking a publisher. He lives in Lubbock, Texas.

MARC POLONSKY lives in Camp Meeker, California, and cohosts a radio show on kows in Occidental called Commanders of the Airwaves.

WILLIAM POWERS is living in a village in Bolivia. He is the author of Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: A Frontline Chronicle from Bolivia’s War on Globalization (Bloomsbury USA).

JOHN ROSENTHAL lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His book of photographs is called Regarding Manhattan (Safe Harbor Books).

RICHARD C. RUSSELL is a member of PhotoZone, a fine-art photography co-op in Eugene, Oregon. He lives in nearby Florence and is fascinated by the winter storms off the Pacific Northwest’s coast.

CHRISTINE SAARI lives in Marquette, Michigan, and spends springs on her family farm in Austria, where she was born.

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

MARK SMITH-SOTO lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he serves as director of the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has published two books of poetry, Our Lives Are Rivers (University Press of Florida) and Any Second Now (Main Street Rag Press).

THEA SULLIVAN lives in San Francisco and spends most of her time chasing after her two-year-old son, who was born several months after the events described in her essay in the December 2008 issue. She teaches writing, and at parties she likes to impress people by playing the William Tell Overture on her teeth.

COLE THOMPSON lives in Laporte, Colorado, where he raises llamas. His photographs have been published in B&W, Focus, and Photo Life.