Contributors

Ellery Akers is a writer and artist who lives on the Northern California coast. She is the author of the poetry collection Knocking on the Earth and the children’s novel Sarah’s Waterfall: A Healing Story about Sexual Abuse. She teaches poetry workshops and has been a bird watcher for forty years.

Jaquira Díaz is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and an NEA writing fellowship. She lives in Miami Beach, Florida, where she hosts Sunday Salon Miami, a reading series featuring local and international literary voices.

Elizabeth Nordeen is a poet who lives in Portland, Oregon.

Christy Shake lives in Brunswick, Maine, with her ten-year-old son, Calvin, and her photographer husband, Michael Kolster. She writes a blog about her son and his epilepsy at calvinsstory.com, and she is working on a memoir. Her essay in this issue is her first published work.

Gary Snyder is a poet, essayist, and environmental activist. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, he has authored or co-authored more than twenty books. He lives in California in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Leath Tonino is a part-time editor at the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. He lives in Vermont, where he sometimes walks thirty or forty miles a day. His favorite season is winter, his favorite color is gray, and his favorite cardinal direction is north.

Jack Turner worked for more than forty years as a mountain guide and has participated in climbing expeditions around the world. He lives with his wife outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, near Grand Teton National Park.

James Valvis is a former U.S. Army soldier who served during Desert Storm and now lives with his wife and daughter in Issaquah, Washington. He is the author of the poetry collection How to Say Goodbye. In 2004 he quit smoking and as a result could not write for four years.

Joe Wilkins is the author of the memoir The Mountain and the Fathers and two collections of poems. He lives with his family in western Oregon, where he teaches writing at Linfield College. One of his great joys in life is to dive, jump, or otherwise throw himself into any convenient mountain lake or river.

James Carroll is a photographer who lives in Manhattan.

Jocelyn Catterson works as an instructor at the Montana Natural History Center in Missoula and spends most of her free time exploring the surrounding mountains. She has an intense love of morning light, cribbage, and small-town America.

Mike Cavaroc lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and is on the board of a nonprofit seeking to build an observatory and planetarium there. He guides wildlife safaris in the summer and does freelance web design in the winter.

Perry Dilbeck lives in Locust Grove, Georgia, and teaches full time at the Art Institute of Atlanta. He collects animation art and is the author of the photography book The Last Harvest: Truck Farmers in the Deep South.

Rachel J. Elliott lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with her husband and daughter and is The Sun’s editorial associate and photo editor.

Michael Galinsky is a filmmaker, photographer, and musician who recently moved back to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he was born.

Ethan Hubbard lives at Udder Joy Farm in the Chelsea Hills of northern Vermont. He is currently working on three books about the shepherds of Great Britain.

Cole Thompson says he has spent too much of his life participating in what he thought were necessary evils. He is now old and wise enough that he rarely does anything he doesn’t want to do. He lives in Laporte, Colorado.

Gina Marie Williams rides on a mountain-biking team with her teenage sons and is a former wilderness firefighter. Her photography, poetry, and essays have been published or are forthcoming in Fugue, Palooka, theNewerYork, and Drafthorse.

Cynthia E. Wood is a documentary and fine-art photographer living in San Francisco. Once a week she sings in a community choir, which has fulfilled her not-so-secret lifelong desire to be in a band.

Elias Zagha lives in southwestern Colorado and is a park ranger at Mesa Verde National Park. He says he has a terrible habit of not giving himself enough credit, especially when it comes to his photography.