Contributors

Alan Brilliant is a poet living in Oakland, California.

Melody Ermachild Chavis is a private investigator who works on appeals for death-row inmates, and a volunteer with a gardening program run by inner-city youths. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Pema ChödrÖn is an American Buddhist nun and author of Start Where You Are and The Wisdom of No Escape (both Shambhala Publications). She lives at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Alison Clement works with disabled children and has just finished a novel. She lives with her family in Corvallis, Oregon.

Bell Hooks is a writer, activist, and Distinguished Professor of English at City College in New York. She lives in New York City.

Gillian Kendall is an English professor, writer, lesbian, and first-generation American who has read every word of every Sun since 1988. She recently coauthored poet Mark O’Brien’s autobiography, How I Became a Human Being, which will be published later this year by Kodansha American. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

Michael Matkin is a lost Canadian living in New York City who recently worked as a kayaking guide on Lake Superior. His story in this issue is his first published work.

Sy Safransky is editor of The Sun.

Gene Zeiger is a poet and writing teacher living in Shelburne, Massachusetts. Her essay in this issue is part of an unpublished memoir about losing her mother.