ELLERY AKERS lives on the northern California coast and is the author of the poetry collection Knocking on the Earth (Wesleyan University Press) as well as a children’s novel, Sarah’s Waterfall: A Healing Story about Sexual Abuse (Safer Society Press).

ROY ARENELLA’s photographs have been published in Popular Photography, the New York Times, and the Village Voice. He lives in Greenwich, New York.

POE BALLANTINE does not need bifocals, he says, as he slides his glasses to the tip of his nose to read. He is the author of the true-crime book Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere, due out in 2012, and the subject of the documentary Poe Ballantine, A Writer in America (copies of which can be purchased for $13.99, shipping included, from Al Saperstein, P.O. Box 111, Earleton, Florida, 32631). He lives in Chadron, Nebraska.

ELLEN BASS’s poetry books include The Human Line and Mules of Love. She teaches in Pacific University’s low-residency mfa program and lives in Santa Cruz, California.

MICHELLE CACHO-NEGRETE lives in Wells, Maine, and her essays appear in The Sun’s new book The Mysterious Life of the Heart and in Thoreau’s Legacy, an anthology from the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. She teaches writing both in person and online and is recovering well from surgery, thanks to Dr. Jeff Thurlow.

STEPHEN DATNOFF likes to fix broken things, Victorian houses in particular. He lives in Hood River, Oregon.

DANIEL DONAGHY is the author of two poetry collections: Start with the Trouble (University of Arkansas Press) and Streetfighting (BkMk Press). He lives in Willington, Connecticut, where he is an assistant professor of English at Eastern Connecticut State University and a blissfully mediocre fly fisherman.

GLORIA BAKER FEINSTEIN’s photography books include Convergence, Among the Ashes, and Kutuuka. She has been taking photographs since she was three, when she took pictures of her stuffed bunny. She lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

ARVIND GARG lives in New York City. He came to the U.S. in 1976 from India to study English literature but fell in love with photography instead. His work is represented by Corbis and Getty.

PETER INGRASSELINO works as a nurse in a dialysis clinic and lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

MEG KEARNEY is author of a novel in verse, The Secret of Me (Persea Books), as well as two poetry collections: An Unkindness of Ravens (BOA Editions) and the forthcoming Home by Now (Four Way Books). She is the director of the Solstice mfa program at Pine Manor College and lives in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, with her three-legged black Lab, Trooper.

MARJORIE KEMPER always said that her epitaph should be “Here Lies a Woman Who Could Make Gravy from a Sailcat” (slang for roadkill that’s been flattened by passing cars). So that’s the one her family gave her at her memorial service. She died in Los Angeles on November 12, 2009, and her ashes were scattered in Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. Marjorie grew up in Texas and Louisiana, and much of her fiction is set in the Deep South. In May the Texas Institute of Letters gave her the prestigious Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story. Her novel, Until That Good Day, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2003.

CHRIS KOGUT donates proceeds from her photography to humanitarian efforts in Myanmar and to refugee-resettlement programs in Rochester, New York, where she lives.

SOLIMAN LAWRENCE lives in Berlin, Germany, and regularly travels to Poland to document the renewal of Jewish culture there.

GAUTAM NARANG’s work has been published in National Geographic, and he lives in London.

DAWN PAUL is the editor of Corvid Press, and her novel The Country of Loneliness will be published by Marick Press in 2009. She lives in Beverly, Massachusetts.

ROBERT PEAK lives in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. His love of photography began in the 1990s on a four-year bicycle tour he and his wife took through Europe, Africa, Asia, New Zealand, and North America.

ROGER PFINGSTON is a retired teacher of English and photography who lives in Bloomington, Indiana. His poetry has been published in The Dos Passos Review, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, and The Sylvan Echo.

BARBARA PLATEK is an author living in Ithaca, New York. She has been listening to people’s dreams as part of her Jungian psychotherapy practice for seventeen years.

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

DEBRA SUGERMAN is a photographer and filmmaker from Austin, Texas.

MORGAN TYREE photographs small-town high-school football, and his work has been published in Harper’s and Shots. He teaches graphic arts at Northwest College and lives in Powell, Wyoming.

JERRY N. UELSMANN’s most recent book of photographs is The Mind’s Eye, and his work is in the permanent collections of art museums worldwide. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.