Contributors

Poe Ballantine says he tries very hard to be hip but still has trouble keeping a straight face about nipple rings. His new collection of personal essays (all of which have appeared in The Sun) is titled 501 Minutes to Christ and can be purchased directly from Hawthorne Books (www.hawthornebooks.com). He lives in Chadron, Nebraska.

Ellen Bass’s new book of poems, The Human Line, was published this year by Copper Canyon Press. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, and teaches writing retreats in some of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Jean Braithwaite lives in Edinburgh, Texas, where she teaches English, directs the MFA program, and struggles to improve her Spanish, all at the University of Texas–Pan American. Her work has appeared in the New York Times and Bayou.

Akhim Yuseff Cabey was raised in the Bronx, New York, and now lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches composition and screenwriting at Columbus College of Art and Design, moonlights as a bartender, and spends too much time playing Texas Hold ’Em with his girlfriend, Lena. His work has appeared in Obsidian II and Callaloo.

Diane Lefer is the author of the short-fiction collection California Transit (Sarabande Books). She lives in Los Angeles, where she recently wore an orange jumpsuit and a black hood over her head to protest the detention of prisoners without charges or trials at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Alison Luterman is writing a musical — an art form she knows nothing about. You can follow her progress at www.seehowwealmostfly.blogspot.com.

Madeena Spray Nolan published two novels so long ago that everyone, including her, has forgotten about them. Her darkest secret is her attendance at the 1960 Republican convention as a fanatic Kansas Youth for Nixon. She finally confessed this to her son and daughter-in-law, who have regarded her with a shade of suspicion ever since. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Sy Safransky is editor of The Sun.

Mark Smith-Soto is the 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).

Maureen Beitler is a photographer and nurse living in New York City.

Thomas Clark is a photographer who lives in St. Albans, New York.

Karen Cunningham is a photographer who lives in New York City.

Steve Donoso is a photographer who lives in Camden, Maine.

Carlos Gustavo lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His photographs have been published in Harper’s, Elle, and Vogue.

Gary Harwood is coauthor of Growing Season (Kent State University Press), a book of his photos with text by David Hassler about a migrant-worker community in Ohio. He lives in Kent, Ohio.

Erik Hoffner is a photographer and renewable-energy activist whose favorite animal is the sea cucumber. He works for Orion magazine and lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

Jon Hughes is a photojournalist who began taking photographs in 1985 at the age of forty. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Prescott Moore Lassman is a photographer and lawyer whose work has been published in the Washington Post and B&W. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Robyn McDaniels is a photographer living in Audubon, Minnesota.

Doug McMains is a photographer and cinematographer who lives in Herman, Nebraska. His work is represented by Getty Images.

Lake Newton is a photographer who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Sandra-Lee Phipps worked as a photojournalist for the Village Voice in New York City for eight years before moving to Camden, Maine.

Craig J. Satterlee lives in Powell, Wyoming, and teaches photography at Northwest College.

A.J. Shumer is a photographer living in Westport, Massachusetts.

Rick Stewart is a photographer who lives in San Francisco.

Chip Thomas is a photographer and family physician on the Navajo nation reservation in Shonto, Arizona.

Peter C. Tragni has been a police officer in Danbury, Connecticut, for twenty years. In 2004 he went to Iraq as a volunteer to help train the Iraqi police force. While he was there he took thousands of photographs. He lives in Waterbury, Connecticut.

Jenny Warburg is a photographer and political activist living in Durham, North Carolina.