Contributors
April 2003
Writers
Steve Almond has been writing poetry and prose ever since his parents kicked him out of the house. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, and his short-story collection, My Life in Heavy Metal, is out this month in paperback from Grove Press.
moreVic Coccimiglio is a poet living in Long Beach, California. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, North American Review, Paris Review, Poetry, and in the anthology The Invisible Ladder (Henry Holt & Company).
moreA native New Yorker, Arnie Cooper now lives on the edge of a national forest near Santa Barbara, California, where he writes about spirituality, environmental issues, technology, and the media. His work has appeared in Mother Jones, Context, Language Magazine, and various literary journals.
moreRichard Grossinger is a cultural anthropologist, writer, and co-founder of North Atlantic Books, a leading publisher of alternative health, martial arts, and spiritual titles.
moreJeff Gundy’s book of essays, Scattering Point: The World in a Mennonite Eye, is just out from SUNY Press. He teaches writing and literature at Bluffton College in Ohio and spends a lot of time these days trying to envision other lives for himself.
moreJames Lainsbury has worked as a logger, editor, and many things in between. He is a Mainer by birth but is currently nestled between Interstate 90 and the rail yard in Missoula, Montana, with his girlfriend and a moody springer spaniel. His essay “Control” is part of a larger, unpublished work.
moreStephen J. Lyons lives in Monticello, Illinois, and writes a monthly column, “Letters from Midlife,” for austinmama.com. His work has recently appeared in Adbusters, Salon, and Hope, and he has an essay in the forthcoming anthology Father Nature: Fathers as Guides to the Natural World (University of Iowa Press).
moreEllen Slezak’s collection of short stories Last Year’s Jesus was recently published by Hyperion. She lives in Los Angeles.
moreNelson A. Smith is a freelance advertising writer and essayist living in Manhattan. His work has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the Baffler, In These Times, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a cultural history of pigeons, from Genesis to Darwin to Skinner, tentatively titled “Lessons of an Organic Widget.”
morePhotographers
Velvy Appleton is a photographer, filmmaker, and musician living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
moreGordon Baer is author of a book of photographs titled Vietnam: The Battle Comes Home (Morgan and Morgan) and a recipient of the Nikon World Understanding Award. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
moreJames Carroll is a photographer living in New York City.
moreLesley Cecchi lives and takes photographs in Montclair, New Jersey.
moreRyan Fox is a freelance travel photographer living in Beaverton, Oregon.
moreKrissy Hall is a recent college graduate who’s just getting started in photography. She lives in Newton, Georgia.
moreDoris Mitsch is a San Francisco photographer whose work has been exhibited nationally.
moreBrian Peterson is a photographer and museum curator who lives in Lower Gwynedd, Pennsylvania.
moreSara Safransky is a photographer living in Holyoke, Massachusetts. For the last six months, she’s been travelling through Europe “like an athlete in an eating marathon.”
moreMelissa Shook is a photographer, writer, and teacher living in Chelsea, Massachusetts. She’s completed a book about how her mother’s death from stomach cancer caused her to forget most of her childhood.
moreRamin Talaie is a freelance photographer in New York City.
moreJennifer Trier is a “rookie photographer” living in San Diego, California. Her photograph in this issue is her first published work.
morePhotographer Karen Tweedy-Holmes makes portraits of bugs, beasts, buildings, plants, people, and large rock formations. She lives in New York City but vanishes into the desert every chance she gets.
moreOn The Cover
William Carter lives in Los Altos Hills, California. He took this month’s cover photograph on the western end of Molokai, a relatively undeveloped Hawaiian island, in December 2001. It was late in the afternoon, and the hazy sun was coming through the crashing surf, illuminating it. “The surf was very high,” he writes. “A person unlucky enough to be out in it would have been dwarfed by the wave.”
moreEditor
Sy Safransky
Assistant Editor
Andrew Snee
Art Director
Robert Graham
Manuscript Editor
Colleen Donfield
Editorial & Photo
Assistant
Rachel J. Elliott
Editorial Assistant
Erica Berkeley
Proofreader
Seth Mirsky
Manuscript Reader
Gillian Kendall
Editorial Intern
Arjun Nicastro
Business Manager
Becky Gee
Circulation DIRECTOR
Krista Bremer
Project Manager
Angela Winter
Business Assistant
Erika Simon
Administrative Assistant
Heather Barnes
Circulation Consultant
Ilona Page