Contributors

Emma Duffy-Comparone’s fiction has appeared in the annual Pushcart Prize anthology, Ploughshares, and One Story, and she has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ conferences. She lives in Quincy, Massachusetts, and teaches at Tufts University.

Natalia Ginzburg was an Italian author, activist, and outspoken opponent of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime. She died in 1991, a recipient of Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Strega Prize.

Nikki Giovanni is a poet and a recipient of the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She teaches at Virginia Tech University.

Louise Glück served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2004. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris.

Robert Hayden was the first African American to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now known as U.S. Poet Laureate. He died in 1980.

Marie Howe’s most recent collection of poetry is titled The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. Her work has been published in The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

Jane Kenyon published four books of poetry and one book of poetry translations before her death from leukemia in 1995.

Mark Leviton and his son were recently interviewed on the radio series This American Life. He hosts a sixties-themed music show on KVMR in Nevada City, California.

W.S. Merwin won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971; an opponent of the American war in Vietnam, he donated the award money to the draft-resistance movement. He won a Pulitzer again in 2009. He lives on a former pineapple plantation in Hawaii.

Sharon Olds teaches at New York University. Her work has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Len Roberts was an American poet and translator who authored nine books of poetry. He died in 2007.

Gary Snyder is a poet, lecturer, and environmental activist. He served as the inspiration for the main character in Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel The Dharma Bums.

Anne Stevenson has published more than a dozen collections of poetry and a biography of the American poet Sylvia Plath.

Lisa Taddeo’s writing has been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best American Political Writing. She is currently at work on her debut nonfiction book for Simon & Schuster, about desire and sexuality in America, and has just completed her first novel. She lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts.

Lad Tobin is seeking a publisher for a collection of personal essays about his midlife rediscovery of his teenage self. He lives in Kittery Point, Maine, and teaches at Boston College.

Steven Ainsworth played around with photography in the late 1970s and early 1980s but has taken it semi-seriously only in the last decade. He works for the Environmental Protection Agency, protecting drinking-water sources. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Rita Bernstein left a career as a civil-rights lawyer to pursue photography. Her images have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Black & White. She divides her time between Philadelphia and New York City.

James Carroll is a New York City–based photographer whose work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, LightWork, and Black & White.

Nikolai Fox strays from photography to play his fiddle, write songs, and explore the landscape. He lives in Narberth, Pennsylvania, where he can’t fall asleep before 2 AM.

Elizabeth McGuire is a fifth-generation Texan who doesn’t like barbecue. She lives with her family in Austin.

Cris Ritchie likes to take photos in his home state of Kentucky “because Kentucky is the best and if you haven’t been there you should visit sometime.” His images have appeared in Kentucky Monthly and his writing has been published in Still: The Journal.

Sunny Selby lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her husband and three children and longs to one day return to her father’s darkroom in Seattle.

Jackson Waite learned more about photography while taking Christmas pictures at Kmart in rural Indiana than from his formal college training. Nothing prepares you for the challenges of capturing a memorable moment like a hundred sugar-loaded two-year-olds waiting for their turn with Santa. He lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts.

Cynthia E. Wood is a photographer who sings in the secular community choir Calling All Choir. She lives in San Francisco, California, where she browses bookstores and plays Boggle.