Contributors

Jared Harél’s poetry collection Let Our Bodies Change the Subject won the 2023 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and two kids. (jaredharel.com)

Judith Hertog is finishing a memoir-in-essays on identity, conflict, and how not to lose hope. She grew up in Amsterdam, moved to Israel as a teen, and is now based in Vermont. As a student in Jerusalem in the nineties, she volunteered for the human rights organization HaMoked. (judithhertog.com)

Julia Kolchinsky emigrated from Ukraine when she was six years old, a fact she continues to blame for her atrocious English spelling. She’s the author of five books of poetry, including Parallax and the collaborative collection When the World Stopped Touching. An assistant professor of English at Denison University, she lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio.

Hugh Martin, an Iraq War veteran, is the author of In Country and The Stick Soldiers. Back in 1999, during a fall basketball league in Twinsburg, Ohio, he was dunked on by LeBron James. (hugh-martin.com)

Max Rechnitz is the pseudonym of a writer in Brooklyn who really has written a memoir about his grandfather.

Sy Safransky is founder and editor emeritus of The Sun. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Eric Paul Shaffer doesn’t surf, although he lives on O‘ahu atop the remains of the Ko‘olau Volcano. Today the caldera is peaceful enough for him to write. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Second Nature (forthcoming in 2026) and Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems. (ericpaulshaffer.com)

Debbie Urbanski has hiked through the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and Iceland, though her favorite spots are the quiet hemlock forests on the Finger Lakes Trail in Central New York. She is the author of the novel After World and the story collection Portalmania. (debbieurbanski.com)

Jacki Dickert is a New Jersey−based photographer who uses her camera to study form and energy. She attends closely to the resonances of light, shape, and flow in the emotional and aesthetic realms to create her work.

Mia Gorrell lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband, four children, and four rescue animals. When not playing mom, she enjoys getting lost in thrift stores and dreaming about the beach.

Heidi Hart is a native of California who enjoys traveling with her family, tending to their small menagerie of pets, and photographing absolutely everything. (hhartphotography.com)

Drayden Hebb has been making photos for more than forty years and loves seeing light, texture, shadow, and shape coalesce into a singular image. She is based in Baltimore, Maryland, and is currently working on a series showcasing older lesbians. (draydenhebb.com)

Karla James is a Salvadoran American writer and photographer based in North Carolina whose work explores identity, inheritance, and displacement. In her writing and her photography, she focuses on how personal and generational histories shape lived experience.

Brooke McKinney is a writer, comedian, and photographer from South Georgia. She is the author of the poetry collection The Distance Between Birds and is currently performing across the South on her Greatest Lovin’ Bastard comedy tour.

Yousef Naser is a photographer from Cairo, Egypt. A two-time Young Amateur Photographer of the Year, he has had his work recognized by Travel Photographer of the Year, the Sony World Photography National Awards, and UNESCO. A student at the Higher Institute of Cinema, he documents Cairo’s “organized chaos” through a cinematic lens.

Kaitlyn Rode lives in Detroit, Michigan, but recently spent two and a half months volunteering at a hostel in Ecuador. (rode-photography.com)

Skip Schiel is a photographer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (teeksaphoto.org)

Marc Ward is a photographer and painter living with his wife on the sloped land of East Tennessee. (marcwardphotography.com)

Najib Joe Hakim discovered his Palestinian roots as a young adult about to enter college. (It’s a long story.) He later moved to Jerusalem to discover what being Palestinian meant to him. He now lives in San Francisco, California. This month’s cover features a portrait of Suzy Abu-Nie, a member of the Bay Area’s large Palestinian community. Suzy’s parents come from Shufat, a town outside East Jerusalem; despite being born in the United States, Suzy always refers to Palestine as “back home.” (jaffaorangephoto.com)