Contributor Bios:

Erica Bloom lives in Missoula, MT, where she writes and attends school. She is currently working on a project that looks at women's involvement in the anti-toxic movement.

Grace Brogan is a writer, maker, and grower. Her passion for drawing attention toward one's part in the complicated system of relationships in which we live has brought her into the employ of several amazing organizations and institutions.  She hopes to handbuild a life of learning, sharing, and making change.

Tony Bynum is a full-time nature, wildlife, adventure and fine art photographer. His images are of wild animals and wild places and the people who make the outdoors part of their lives. One of his images is featured on the cover of the Glacier National Park Centennial book by C.W. Guthrie of Missoula, MT, titled, The First 100 Years.  Tony also operates Glacier Impressions gallery in the tiny village of East Glacier Park, MT, where he and his 8 year-old daughter make their home.

After earning a M.S. in wildlife biology from UM in 1974, Douglas H. Chadwick studied mountain goats in Glacier National Park. He has since written hundreds of articles and 11 books on natural history and conservation around the globe. The Wolverine Way is the result of years of volunteer work for the Glacier Wolverine Project, helping catch and radio-track these wildest of wild carnivores along the continent's crown.

Bob Friend holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in journalism. His personal interests include photography, writing, bicycling, hiking, cross-country skiing, home projects, guitar and travel.  Bob and his wife Kerstin live in Wauconda Township, IL. Bob has been hiking in and photographing Glacier National Park since the late 1980s, most recently in August 2009 when this photograph was taken.

Beth Gibson is an Environmental Studies Graduate Student at the University of Montana.

M Jackson is a Masters of Environmental Studies candidate at the University of Montana. She calls Southeast Alaska and a farm in Washington State home. She can be contacted at: mlejackson@gmail.com

After visiting the Rockies three years ago and being awed and inspired by their beauty, Sara Mintz moved to Missoula and spent a lot of time poking around the area taking photographs. Now enrolled in graduate school at the University of Montana, she's unfortunately too busy to go out and take pictures as often as she'd like. 

Although she greatly misses both her recently abandoned role as an itinerant field biologist and her family back home in Wisconsin, Beth Raboin now makes herself content as a graduate student in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Montana.

Elizabeth Ruff was born and raised in Alaska and developed an early love for the outdoors, adventure and travel.  At a young age she also became very fond of photography. She would set up her stuffed animals for portrait practice with her Kodak 110 camera. It is only natural that her interests would eventually combine, and she would eventually move onto real animals and to the amazing landscape she calls home.

Brian Schott is a freelance writer and the founding editor of Whitefish Review, a literary journal that features the writing, art and photography of mountain culture. His most recent fiction has appeared in Big Sky Journal. As a freelance travel and outdoor writer, his award-winning stories have been featured in The Boston Sunday Globe, National Geographic Traveler, Ski Magazine, Skiing Magazine, New York Post, New York Daily News, and New Hampshire Sunday News. His photography has appeared in national publications like USA Today and Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Elaine Dugas Shea has lived in Montana for 38 years - enjoying a career in social justice, working in Civil Rights, and serving American Indian Tribes. Her writing was featured in Third Wednesday, South Dakota Review, Front Range, The Light in Ordinary Things, Hope Whispers, Samsara, and the upcoming anthology When Last on the Mountain: Essays, Stories and Poems from Writers Over 50.

Rebecca Solnit is a writer, historian, and activist who can see Mount Tamalpais and the tip of the Golden Gate Bridge out her northwest window, or nearer at hand, asphalt, traffic, trees, a Gospel church, and a lot of power lines. The product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is the author of a dozen books and most recently a visiting writer at the University of Montana, where she had hoped for more snow.

Harrison Rutledge is a graduate of the University of Montana, Missoula, earning a B.A. in English and Creative Writing with a minor in Native American studies. At UM, he studied under poets Greg Pape, Prageeta Sharma, and Brian Blanchfield. He is now pursuing an M.A. in English at Montana State University, Bozeman.

Sarah Weatherby is a student in the Environmental Studies program at the University of Montana. She likes taking pictures.

Rick White has written for The Onion and Westword. He will receive an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana in May.

Liz Williams graduated with an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana in 2008. She now lives in southern Oregon, where she teaches people about the importance of bird conservation, hikes, takes photos, and tries to write occasionally.

Kathleen Yale has spent the last few years exploring the East while editing at Orion magazine. This summer she finally returns to her beloved Glacier for another season of grizzly hair collection and getting dirty.

Maya Jewell Zeller's pieces in this issue are from a series of linked poems, each titled "The Rust Fish." Two more from the series will be in the next issue of Blue Earth Review, and other poems recently appear or are forthcoming in the anthologies Floating Bridge Review and Poets of the American West and the journals Rattle, Pank, Hayden's Ferry Review, and High Desert Journal. Maya lives in Spokane, where she teaches English at Gonzaga University.

Christopher Zumski Finke moved to Missoula from St. Paul, Minnesota. He studied literature in the Midwest before coming to Montana with his wife to write and study the natural world.