Contributors

Sarah Braunstein’s first novel is The Sweet Relief of Missing Children. She lives in Portland, Maine, teaches at Colby College and the University of Southern Maine, and works with elementary-school students through the East End Power Pens, a group she founded. She’s learning everything there is to know about car engines and clean energy from her eight-year-old son.

Catherine Freeling’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Bellevue Literary Review, and Nimrod. She lives in Berkeley, California — home to many Francophiles, who, like her, always dream of their next trip across the Atlantic.

William Giraldi is the author of the novels Busy Monsters and Hold the Dark. His next book, a memoir titled The Hero’s Body, will be published in September. A contributing editor for The New Republic and fiction editor for AGNI, he lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife and two sons. Another son, tentatively named Axl, will arrive in April.

Lawrence Sargent Hall was educated at Yale and worked as a professor of English at Bowdoin College for more than forty years. Based on actual events and initially rejected by Esquire and The New Yorker, his story in this issue was selected by John Updike as one of the best of the century. Hall died in 1993.

Mark Leviton was raised in the perpetual sunshine of Southern California, where he played pick-up baseball in a dirt lot, flew kites in the middle of the street, read DC Comics, and went home only when it got dark. He now lives in Nevada City, California.

Joan Murray is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Swimming for the Ark: New and Selected Poems, 1990–2015. She is the editor of The Pushcart Book of Poetry and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Genevieve Thurtle lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and son. She has been a high-school English teacher since 1996 and recently earned her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been published in Crazyhorse, Appalachian Heritage, and The Chariton Review. Her essay in this issue is excerpted from her memoir-in-progress, Light These Bones.

Nicholas Bell prefers foggy days to sunny ones and skydiving to public speaking. His photographs have been published in Shutterbug, Adore Noir, and F-Stop.

John Camara pokes around deserted industrial sites when he’s not wandering the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

J. Moses Ceaser is a photographer and community activist who lives in Berkeley, California. His photographs have been used by the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Oxfam. He runs a community cooking group called Frugal Foodies.

Amanda Donaho is a wedding photographer based in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area. With four kids and a full-time photography business, she functions on large amounts of coffee and wine.

Frank Hamrick is an associate professor of photography and book arts at Louisiana Tech University. He lives in Ruston, Louisiana.

James Sedwick is a psychotherapist and photographer who lives in South Wales, New York. His photographs have appeared in Orion and LensWork’s multimedia edition. He says he’s a child at heart, but a serious child.

Ansley West lives and works with her husband on their farm on the coast of Georgia. Her work has been exhibited in Atlanta, Georgia; Burlington, Vermont; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Lloyd Wolf’s life is deeply enriched by Beethoven’s late string quartets and the blues of Hound Dog Taylor. He’s one of five contributors to the new book Living Diversity: The Columbia Pike Documentary Project, which features images of one of America’s most ethnically diverse neighborhoods: Columbia Pike in Arlington, Virginia.

Cynthia E. Wood lives in San Francisco, California, and sings in a choir, which fulfills her not-so-secret lifelong desire to be in a band.