Contributors

Ellery Akers is the winner of five national poetry awards and author of Knocking on the Earth (Wesleyan University Press). She lives in Point Reyes Station, California.

Bella Mahaya Carter’s writing has been published in Calyx and Earth’s Daughters. She is also a trained choreographer and dancer who works with children. She lives in Studio City, California.

Robert P. Cooke worked at British Petroleum for twenty-five years as a pipe fitter, welder, and trainer. He is now retired and stays home to cook, clean, and write poetry while his wife is at work. “I still get up at five in the morning as if I’m going to my former job,” he says. He lives in Highland, Indiana.

Diane Covington is an award-winning journalist who bought a run-down organic apple farm to save it from developers. She has since mastered mowing, fixing broken irrigation pipes (including those she has broken while mowing), and climbing trees to harvest apples. She lives in Encinitas, California.

Norman Fischer is founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation (www.everydayzen.org) and former co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. His latest book of poetry is I Was Blown Back (Singing Horse Press). He lives in Muir Beach, California.

Anna Belle Kaufman is a former silversmith and set designer who now works as an art psychotherapist with AIDS and cancer patients. She lives in Gualala, California.

Valerie Ann Leff is the author of the novel Better Homes and Husbands (St. Martin’s Press). She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Christopher Locke’s essay in this issue is from a memoir-in-progress called Speaking in Tongues. He hopes that a month in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, will help him complete the book. If not, he says, at least he’ll be able to indulge in some pulled-pork tacos and a little mescal.

Alison Luterman blogs about art, life, performance, and poetry at seehowwealmostfly.blogspot.com. She lives in Oakland, California.

Linda McCullough Moore lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she’s toying with the idea of founding an institute for Christian studies. “Either that,” she says, “or cleaning out my refrigerator.”

Kim Stafford directs the Northwest Writing Institute. His most recent book is A Thousand Friends of Rain: New and Selected Poems (Carnegie-Mellon University Press). He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Ryan Anderson is a photographer and archaeologist. He lives in Oceanside, California.

Lisa Callamaro is a photographer who also works in the film industry. She lives in Beverly Hills, California.

Sylvia de Swaan is a photographer who was born in Romania, survived the Holocaust, and lived in refugee camps until she was ten. She now lives in Utica, New York, and has made seven trips to Europe to explore her past.

Gary Green teaches photography at the college level and is currently an artist-in-residence at Southern Maine Community College. He lives in Portland, Maine.

Thomas Hyde recently sold the community newspaper he owned and edited for more than a decade so that he could pursue photography and writing. He lives in Elma, Washington.

Clemens Kalischer has been taking photographs since 1947 and maintains Image Photos, an archive of more than half a million pictures. He lives in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Susan Lirakis Nicolay is a photographer who lives in Sandwich, New Hampshire. She loves to learn new things and tries to follow the example of her mother, who got her PhD when she was seventy-six.

Jacqueline Moreau works with special-education students during the school year and as a fire lookout in a national forest in summer. She lives in White Salmon, Washington, with her son, a horse, a cat, and chickens that lay blue-green eggs.

Gary Oliveira is glad he ignored the advice of his high-school guidance counselor, who said, about becoming a photographer: “Don’t confuse a hobby with a profession.” He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Jan Phillips’s photographs have been published in the book God Is at Eye Level: Photography as a Healing Art (Quest Books). She lives in San Diego, California, where the light is good.

Claire Sides lives in Raymond, Washington, where she takes photographs, delivers mail, and hikes with her two dogs. She finds a penny almost every day.

Tim Stegmaier is a photographer who performs West African dance professionally, though he is not West African. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Cole Thompson is a photographer who lives on a small ranch in Laporte, Colorado.

Stephanie Umeda is a photographer who lives in Brooklyn, New York.