Contributors

Christine Byl lives in a yurt north of Denali National Park. She is the author of the memoir Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods and makes her living as a professional trail-builder. She loves bridges, birds, sled dogs, tools, free speech, and snow (the more the better).

Connie May Fowler lives on a small Mexican island in the Caribbean, where she makes a mean mole sauce, has grown to hate cruise-ship tourists, and can say, “Please get out of my yard,” in Mayan. Her essay in this issue is from her forthcoming memoir, A Million Fragile Bones, about living through the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. It will be published in April by Twisted Road Publications.

Barack Obama is the forty-fourth president of the United States.

Eva Saulitis was a writer and marine biologist who lived in Homer, Alaska. She is the author of two poetry collections, a memoir, and a posthumous book of essays. She died in 2016.

Wayne Scott’s first essay for The Sun, about infertility, appeared in November 1998. Nineteen years later he lives with three teenagers and his partner in Portland, Oregon, where he is a writer, therapist, and teacher.

Heather Sellers lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida. She teaches creative writing and is the author of the memoir You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know. A native Floridian, she enjoys fishing for trout from an orange canoe in Dixie Bay.

Mark Smith-Soto has been working for more than sixty years to write a perfect poem and doesn’t plan to quit anytime soon. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Sparrow lives in the small, touristy town of Phoenicia, New York, with his wife, Violet Snow. His latest book is How to Survive the Coming Collapse of Civilization (And Other Helpful Hints), and his new app, Fake Wisdom, is available on iTunes.

Lisa Taddeo lives in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. She recently received a Pushcart Prize and is at work on her debut nonfiction book for Simon & Schuster. Someday she’d like to open a restaurant called Burgers & Sushi in the Italian countryside.

Lori Barra is the director of the Isabel Allende Foundation, which works to empower women and girls. She lives in Sausalito, California, but still has a Brooklyn accent.

William Carter’s photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. His latest book is Causes and Spirits. He lives in San Mateo, California.

Rachel J. Elliott lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with her husband and daughter. She is the editorial associate and photo editor at The Sun.

Michael Galinsky is the co-director of All the Rage, a documentary about Dr. John Sarno, whose theory of psychosomatic back pain challenges mainstream approaches. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Robert Graham is the art director at The Sun and lives with his two daughters in Carrboro, North Carolina.

Carlos A. Gustavo is from New York City. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Oxford American, and Black & White.

James Slezak has a background in experimental psychology but has been a photographer since 2010. He lives in Hampton Bays, New York, just a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

Linda Smogor lives in Homer, Alaska, where she skis, dances, and grows her own food.

Eoin Vincent lives north of Boston with his wife and three children. He’s been taking photographs for thirty years.