Poe Ballantine’s latest book is 501 Minutes to Christ (Hawthorne Books). He lives in Chadron, Nebraska, where he is a school custodian. He says, “It feels good to be back in education.”

Michael Chitwood’s seventh collection of poems, Clamor, will be published by Tupelo Press in 2010. He teaches at the University of North Carolina and lives in Chapel Hill with his two children, who sigh whenever they see him trying to send a text message.

Robert P. Cooke retired from his job as a pipe fitter and welder, then returned to work, and now he thinks almost every day about retiring again. He lives in Highland, Indiana.

Monica Drake is the author of the novel Clown Girl (Hawthorne Books). She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches writing at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She recently finished a screenplay and is at work on a new novel.

Tim Farrington is the author of the cunnilingus entry in Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex (Bloomsbury USA), which can be found on page 69 (really). He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Maria Hummel is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and lives with her husband and son in San Francisco, near the only natural, aboveground creek in the city. Her writing has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Literary Mama, and Ploughshares. Her essay in this issue won the 2009 Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award from the Salem College Center for Women Writers.

Adrie Kusserow is a cultural anthropologist who lives in Underhill Center, Vermont, with her husband and two children. She is the author of a book of poems, Hunting Down the Monk (BOA Editions), and is working on a second collection, about her time in Sudan.

Danusha Laméris eats sushi, paints watercolors, and writes poems in Santa Cruz, California, where she lives with her husband, Armando.

Angela Long’s poetry collection Observations from Off the Grid is forthcoming from Libros Libertad. She lives with her Sicilian husband and tortoiseshell cat in a log cabin in British Columbia, Canada, where she runs her laptop and printer with wind power.

John O’Donohue

Jamie Passaro lives with her husband and their two daughters in Eugene, Oregon. They recently dug up their front lawn to plant a vegetable garden, and she has grown to love a good kale smoothie with breakfast.

Sy Safransky is editor and publisher of The Sun.

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.

Sandy Carter is coauthor of the book of photographs Women in Medicine: A Celebration of Their Work (Firefly Books). She lives in Anacortes, Washington.

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.

Anders Goldfarb’s photographs have been published in Dissent, Witness, and the Boston Globe. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

James LePore lives in South Salem, New York.

Anna Kaufman Moon is the author of a self-published book of photographs called Reflections of New York City: 1963–1972. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times, and Life. She lives in Cobleskill, New York.

G. Alan Myers lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Marilyn Szabo’s photographs are in the collections of Arizona State University and Phoenix College. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Cole Thompson is a father of five who lives on a small ranch in Laporte, Colorado, where he raises llamas. His photographs have been published in B&W, Popular Photography, and Focus.

Eric Wargo is a science writer and editor with an interest in photography and film. He lives in Washington, DC.

Gilda Davidian lives with her husband in Los Angeles and has been a devoted Sun reader since she was fifteen and would steal copies from the local library. She took this month’s cover photograph, of a friend and her son, in Norfolk, Connecticut.