Gregory Bright was wrongfully imprisoned for nearly three decades. After teaching himself to read and write while incarcerated, he appealed the verdict and was acquitted. He is a public speaker and actor who has appeared in 12 Years a Slave and American Horror Story. He lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Vladimir Bukovsky spent a total of twelve years in labor camps, prisons, and psychiatric hospitals for his political dissidence in the Soviet Union. He lives in Cambridge, England, and serves on the advisory council for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Catherine Freeling lives in Berkeley, California, where she recently celebrated getting married and turning seventy. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere.

Tracy Frisch is a homesteader and freelance journalist who lives within a mile of three dairy farms in rural New York. It’s a simple life that she complicates as a local troublemaker — also known as a grassroots organizer.

Lyn Lifshin has published more than 130 books, including All the Poets Who Have Touched Me; Tangled as the Alphabet: The Turkey Poems; and When a Cat Dies. She is the subject of the documentary film Not Made of Glass and lives in Vienna, Virginia.

D.T. Lumpkin lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was banned from volunteering at a prison’s death row unit after he helped his creative-writing students publish their work. He teaches at Middle Tennessee State University.

Peter Mountford is the author of the novels The Dismal Science and A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism. For a few years after college he was the token liberal in a right-wing think tank. He now lives in Seattle, Washington, and teaches at Sierra Nevada College.

Lara Naughton is a documentary playwright who collaborates with individuals who have faced homelessness, HIV/AIDS, wrongful conviction, incarceration, and torture. She teaches creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and lives beside the Mississippi River.

Edwin Barkdoll is a veterinarian who lives in Down East Maine with his wife and pets.

Rene Bechard lives with three dogs, twelve cats, and one husband in Arcanum, Ohio. Her work has been featured online and in local newspapers.

Gloria Baker Feinstein is a Kansas City, Missouri, photographer whose images have been collected in From the Heart: A Mosaic of Memories and Among the Ashes. She’s a pretty decent Scrabble player.

Jon Kral’s photojournalism on the inhumane prison conditions in Caracas, Venezuela, led to the closing of one maximum-security facility and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. He spent decades photographing for three daily Florida newspapers and now lives in Boone, North Carolina.

Susan Lirakis is teaching herself to play djembe — a type of African drum — and banjo. She lives in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire.

Dan Pearlman is a jazz trumpeter and photographer. One of his proudest moments was when one of his images — five siblings in foster care — prompted a couple to adopt all five children.

Cynthia E. Wood lives in San Francisco, California. A long time ago, when she was in her twenties, she lived in Paris, and a little piece of her heart still resides there.

Michael Dvorak’s work has been featured in The New York Times and The Utne Reader and exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. He took this month’s cover photograph in 2007 during a Fourth of July celebration in Annandale, Minnesota. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.