Diane Ackerman is the author of two dozen works of nonfiction, poetry, and children’s literature, including A Natural History of the Senses and The Zookeeper’s Wife, which is being adapted into a film. She also has a molecule named after her: dianeackerone, a sex pheromone in crocodiles. She lives in Ithaca, New York.

Poe Ballantine’s books include the essay collection Guidelines for Mountain Lion Safety and the memoir Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere. He never believed in God until he began writing, when he understood that to kill off characters effectively, you have to create them well and love them first. He lives in Chadron, Nebraska.

Michael Deagler lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Glimmer Train, New England Review, and Slice.

Brian Doyle is the author of, most recently, the novel Chicago. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is the ink-stained, snarling, testy editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland.

Tony Hoagland is building birdhouses in New Mexico, dreaming of walking on ocean beaches and lakeshores, and reading biographies of the remarkable American abolitionist John Brown. He splits his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Houston, Texas.

Keely M. Shinners is a writer and actress who lives in Los Angeles. She is the founder of the feminist art collective and co-op Home for Lost Girls.

Leath Tonino’s journalism has appeared in Outside, his fiction in New England Review, and his poetry in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. A native of Vermont, he has also lived in Colorado, Arizona, and California, with shorter stints in New Jersey and Antarctica.

Rita Bernstein began taking photos after a career as a civil-rights lawyer. She lives and works in Philadelphia and New York City, but spends her summers at a family cottage in rural Pennsylvania.

Monica Denevan lives in San Francisco and regularly travels to Burma and China. Her images have been published in Lens­Work and Black & White Magazine and exhibited in San Francisco, Bangkok, and Hong Kong.

Michael Galinsky’s first published image was in The Sun in 1987. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is currently at work on a film documentary about Dr. John Sarno, whose theory of psychosomatic back pain challenges mainstream medicine.

Nicholas Guy discovered his love for the mountains after working in the tourism industry in the Colorado Rockies. He lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Chris Heltai is a photographer who lives with his wife and two daughters in Los Angeles, where he’s also a substitute teacher, a tutor, a bartender, and an actor.

Andrew Mangum credits his sense of determination to the hours he’s spent on his skateboard, falling and getting up again. He lives in Reisterstown, Maryland, with his wife and children. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, Baltimore’s City Paper, and Léte.

Phyllis Meredith has been a portrait and event photographer for more than twenty years. Some of her earliest memories are of her grandfather’s darkroom, and she still shoots with his vintage cameras. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Jonathan Neal lives in Centralia, Washington, where he hikes, camps, kayaks, and knits. His photo in this issue is his first publication.

Michael Smith has published a book of photos about the decline of Fall River, Massachusetts, a once-thriving textile-industry city. He lives in southeastern Massachusetts.

Marc Toso is a photographer, backcountry skier, and rock climber who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. He likes big mountains and deep deserts. He took this month’s cover photo, which features a crane petroglyph, in a canyon in southeastern Utah.