Contributors

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Mikkel Aaland Mikkel Aaland is a professional photographer and the author of 12 best-selling books on digital photography. Mikkel has regularly led photography workshops in the United States and Europe, and creates training videos in collaboration with Lynda.com and Adobe Press. He is the co-host of the Nordic Light International Festival of Photography held every spring in Kristiansund, Norway. His non-technical books include, "County Fair Portraits,” (for which he made an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman), “Sweat” (an illustrated tour of international bathing customs, culminating a three-year project), "The Sword of Heaven" (about six years he spent documenting an international peace project), "Pilgrimage to Kailash," and a recently published memoir, "The River in My Backyard.” Aaland is currently based in both San Francisco and Telemark, Norway. His first book, "Sweat" (Capra Press, 1978), is currently being developed into a nine-part documentary series scheduled to stream in 2020. www.perfectsweatseries.com. His web site is mikkelaaland.com

Peter Belanger Peter Belanger is a commercial photographer based in San Francisco, California. He has been shooting products and scenes for companies of all sizes since the early 90’s. His work has taken him all over the country, from the cold streets of Boston to the warmth of Silicon Valley. He aims to tell a story about everything he photographs, and is especially adept at using light to tell the story of craftsmanship. When he graduated from RISD (BFA, Photography) the industry was all film and Polaroid. Since then Peter has stayed at the forefront of technological advancements in both the photo industry and everyday life. You can see more of his work at peterbelanger.com. 

Romain Blanquart Romain Blanquart (b. 1973, France) is a visual journalist living in Detroit, Michigan. He studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology and for the last 13 years has been a staff photographer at The Detroit Free Press. He is currently working on The Tyranny of Hope, a long-term essay that explores life at the intersection of hope and hopelessness. The photo essay is an attempt to show what life feels like for most Detroiters. Romain’s work can be seen at: www.romainblanquart.com or on Instagram @dandyromain.

Claire Bloomberg Claire Bloomberg grew up with a French mother – eating three course dinners every night, which left her with a deep love for cooking, eating, drinking wine, and finishing a meal with cheese. She also found herself hypnotized by the beautiful photos in her mother’s cookbooks, and a career was born. Claire is a graduate of the Academy of Art in San Francisco, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in advertising photography, and is a Contributing Photographer for Craftsmanship. She now lives in Marin County and specializes in photography for cookbooks, magazines, and restaurants. Claire can be reached at [email protected]

Alex Boerner Alex Boerner is a portrait and documentary photographer in Durham, North Carolina. He has been a staff photographer for news organizations in Iowa, Florida and North Carolina, and his work has been seen in The Pacific Standard, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, The Guardian, Merge Records, FADER, and others. Alex grew up in Minnesota and is an avid Minnesota Twins baseball fan. His work can be seen at http://www.alexboerner.com.

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Heather Bourbeau Heather Bourbeau has written for The Economist, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and The New York Times. She was a contributing writer to the New York Times bestseller, Not On Our Watch: A Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond with Don Cheadle and John Prendergast, and has worked with various United Nations agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia.

Peter Brand Peter Brand worked for California’s State Coastal Conservancy for 36 years where he managed large habitat restoration, farmland preservation, and waterfront redevelopment projects. In recent years, his primary focus was Ventura County where he brought in approximately $60 million in SCC funding for various projects, acquired 6,000 acres, and preserved another 1,900 acres. He lives on the island of Alameda, swims in and rows on the San Francisco Bay, and continues his involvement in coastal planning.

Jessica Brandi Lifland Jessica Brandi Lifland is a San Francisco-based freelance photographer and Photojournalism instructor. Her work has appeared nationally and internationally in publications such as USA Today, The London Times, The New York Times, The Toronto Star, Newsweek, Time, and Le Monde. Jessica is an instructor of photojournalism at the City College of San Francisco, and has taught photography at the University of Southern Indiana and San Francisco State University. She has won numerous awards for her photojournalism, and participates in exhibits around the country. And her work has taken her all over the U.S. and across the world, including West Africa, the Middle East, Kosovo, Burma, Haiti and South America. For the past 15 years Jessica has been documenting the lives of cowboy poets, and hopes to turn her project into a book. Her work can be seen at https://jessicalifland.com.

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Deborah Busemeyer Deborah Busemeyer has worked for newspapers in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, always gravitating toward challenging subjects and those that give a voice to the vulnerable. She has won numerous local and national reporting awards, including several from the Associated Press for feature and column writing. She has been a journalism fellow at the University of Maryland and now lives with her husband, two children, and their goofy dog (a Basset hound/Dachshund mix) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Will Callan Will Callan is a freelance writer from San Francisco, now living in Oakland. He covers local news in both cities for Hoodline, and has worked as a teacher, an autonomous vehicle operator, and a lumber yard clerk. He enjoys watching Oscar nominated flicks with his two favorite food products in hand—Tim’s Cascade Style Potato Chips (Jalapeño) and Chocolate Ovaltine Drink Mix—and the biggest accomplishment of his young adulthood was completing a triathlon after shuddering through 45 minutes of hypothermia.

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Michael Cervin Michael Cervin is the author of eight books including “Our World of Water: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly of Earth’s Most Critical Resource.” He has covered all regions of Switzerland for Forbes Travel Guides, Wine & Spirits, The Santa Barbara News Press, IntoWine.com, 65 Degrees, Food & Beverage World, and others. Michael’s articles have appeared in Robb Report, The Hollywood Reporter, Decanter (London), Fine Wine & Liquor (China), Old Liquors Magazine (Netherlands), Fox News Health, and more than 100 other publications. He is also a professional judge of wine, spirits, and water.

Scott Chernis Scott Chernis first picked up a camera while attending Tulane University, where a desire to understand the music and culture of New Orleans fueled his early photographic endeavors. Based in San Francisco, Scott continues to work with musicians and is the resident photographer at the SFJAZZ Center. During the past 20 years his work has encompassed a wide range of commercial and arts-based clients. Scott continues to travel to New Orleans to expand his documentation of the city’s vibrant music scene.  His work has been published and presented across many platforms around the world, including a 2012 book, “10 Years with Intersection,” which chronicles a jazz series at San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts.

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Crawford Coates Crawford Coates, a writer and editor in Ventura, Calif., is the publisher at Calibre Press, a public-safety training company. His most recent article, “A Scoutmaster's Fall,” appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of the Appalachian Mountain Club's Appalachia. For more, visit CrawfordCoates.com.

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Christopher D. Cook Christopher D. Cook has written for Harper's, The Economist, the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Prospect, Columbia Journalism Review and elsewhere. He is author of “Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis,” an investigation of the food industry’s impacts on consumers, the environment, workers, and farmers. Christopher has won national honors for his work, including an Aronson Award, Project Censored Award, and Finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. He is based in San Francisco and is a contributing writer for The Progressive. See more of his work at www.christopherdcook.com, and follow him on Twitter at @chrsdcook.

Editors of Craftsmanship Quarterly Editors of Craftsmanship Quarterly.

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Douglas Cruickshank Douglas Cruickshank has written travel stories, profiles, essays, and opinion pieces for many a range of publications, and has also worked in radio, television, and film-making. He has been a photographer for more than four decades, a columnist and editor for Salon.com, and has edited numerous books. He was also the co-founder and editor of The Fessenden Review, the noisiest book review in the known world. Later, he was features editor for The Readerville Journal and editor of Edutopia.com, web site of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. In 1965, his sheep, Lambchop, was awarded the Grand Champion ribbon at the Alameda County Fair. For more information, visit his website: douglascruickshank.com.

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Judith D. Schwartz Judith D. Schwartz is the author of the 2016 book, “Water in Plain Sight,” from which her story in this issue is adapted; and “Cows Save the Planet,” which Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker called “a surprising, informative, and ultimately hopeful book.” Published in 2013, the book won a Nautilus Book Award Silver Prize for Sustainability. Schwartz is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and Brown University, speaks regularly about soil’s links to environmental health, and lives in Vermont with her husband, Tony Eprile, an author and photographer.

Paul D'Amato Paul D'Amato teaches at Columbia College and is currently photographing in the African-American community on Chicago’s west side for a project called “We Shall,” which was published as a book in 2013. He has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant to Bellagio, Italy. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Art Institute of Chicago. Paul is a graduate of Reed College and claims to have learned as much from traveling cross-country four times a year—often by hitch-hiking and hopping freight trains—as he did in class. After receiving an MFA from Yale he moved to Chicago, where he spent the next 14 years photographing neighborhoods that were made into the book, “Barrio.”

James Daly James Daly, a veteran journalist and media entrepreneur, was the founding editor of Business 2.0, Edutopia and TED Books. He has served as Features Editor at Wired, Senior Editor at Forbes ASAP, Editor in Chief at Redherring.com, an Executive Producer at Byliner, Producer of the Reinventors web series "Reinventing Hollywood," and a new media columnist for both Rolling Stone and the San Francisco Chronicle. Daly has also launched print and digital properties for filmmaker George Lucas and TED Curator Chris Anderson, among others. His projects have been featured in Magazine Designs That Work (Rockport Publishing) and have received more than two dozen editorial awards, including a Folio award for Editorial Excellence and two National Magazine Awards. He is the co-author of “2030: A Day in The Life of Tomorrow’s Kids” (Dutton), a book created for school children designed to get them excited about the world they will inhabit (and help create) as adults.

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Francis Davis is the author of seven books on music and other aspects of popular culture, including “Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael” and “Jazz and Its Discontents: A Francis Davis Reader.” Francis has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Times, and The Nation, and is a former Contributing Editor of The Atlantic and columnist for The Village Voice.  His honors and awards include a 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (for Literary Nonfiction), a National Arts Journalism Program Senior Fellowship, five ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for Excellence in Music Journalism, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Journalists Association, and a 2008 Grammy for his album notes to the 50th Anniversary edition of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue.

Blaga Ditrow Blaga Ditrow is a photographer, videographer, and filmmaker with an international background, currently based in the New York City area. She wrote, produced, and filmed “Without Borders,” a documentary that follows the journey of Bulgarian classical and jazz musicians scattered around the world. To make the film, she travelled to Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, England, and Austria, finally ending up where the soul of jazz lives—New Orleans. Ditrow has shot photos for a range of clients, including Johnnie Walker, Western Union, Microsoft, and Rolling Stone magazine.

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Owen Edwards Owen Edwards has been arts editor of Saturday Review, executive editor of American Photographer, managing editor of Cosmopolitan, founding editor of Parenting, and a columnist for GQ and Smithsonian. His books include “Quintessence,” a best-selling design book that he co-authored with the late Betty Cornfeld; its sequel, “Elegant Solutions”; a primer on office politics called “Upward Nobility,” which was adapted from his GQ columns; and “Netscape Time,” written with Netscape founder Jim Clark. Owen’s most recent book is “Caught in the Act,” a collaboration with photographer Howard Schatz. It hopefully will be joined soon by a memoir, recently completed, about his years on a Greek island. Owen is coping with the drought in California by spending long dry days on his motorcycles.

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Garrett Epps Garrett Epps is professor of Law at the University of Baltimore and the Supreme Court correspondent for Theatlantic.com. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post. His freelance work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The American Prospect, and The Washington Monthly. He is the author of two novels and five books of non-fiction, including “American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution.”

Tony Eprile Tony Eprile is a photographer and writer who lives in Vermont and is originally from South Africa. His novel, “The Persistence of Memory,” was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and won the Koret Jewish Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Details, The Nation, Gourmet, and the Washington Post. His photographs have appeared in a range of publications that include The Christian Science Monitor, Gourmet, Discover Magazine, Heifer International’s World Ark Magazine, Pacific Standard, and the Food and Environment Reporting Network.

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Michael Erard Michael Erard writes about language, the people who study it, and how people use languages. His work has appeared in Science, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Aeon, and many other outlets. He is the author of “Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders and What they Mean,” and “Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners.” He and his family normally live in Maine, but they are soon moving to the Netherlands, where Michael will spend 2017-2018 as journalist-in-residence at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

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Laura Fraser Laura Fraser is an author and journalist whose books include the memoirs All Over the Map, The Risotto Guru, and An Italian Affair, which was a New York Times bestseller. She spent a summer in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, when she was ten years old, and developed a life-long love of languages, travel, and Mexican crafts. In 2008, she built a small house near the artisan market in that town, and divides her time between Mexico and San Francisco. She is a long-time member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and is the editorial director and cofounder of Shebooks.net.

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Jeff Greenwald Jeff Greenwald is a writer, photographer and performer. He is the author of six books, including Shopping for Buddhas and The Size of the World, for which he created the first Internet travel blog. His work has appeared in Wired, Salon, Smithsonian, Afar, The New York Times and many other publications. Jeff serves as Executive Director of the non-profit Ethical Traveler (www.EthicalTraveler.org). He has also created a critically acclaimed solo show, “Strange Travel Suggestions,” which draws from his tales as a travel journalist. Jeff's most recent book, Snake Lake, is set during Nepal's 1990 Democracy revolution. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @strangetravel.

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Luisa Grosso Luisa Grosso is an Italian author and director. She is a graduate of the DAMS — the Arts, Music, and Performing Arts department at the University of Bologna, Italy (which, being founded in 1088, is the world’s oldest university). Grosso co-directed "Slow Food on Film", and has made several documentaries, including "A Country Called Po", a journey along the Po river to discover artisans, nature, and music; "Cocktail Dionigi: A Life as a Philosopher"; and "Particular Signs", which was shown at the Venice Film Festival. Grosso has also written and directed theatrical plays, some of which were co-directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. Her publications include the novel "Miriam e la Geometria", and the essay "Reality TV", which won a RAI award for the best research project on mass communication.

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Michael Ham Michael Ham, now retired, worked in a variety of roles: teacher, director of admissions, programmer, marketing manager, and textbook writer. After wearing a beard most of his adult life, he became interested in shaving a decade ago. Since then, he has tried and tested many products, ideas, and techniques, and has summarized what he learned in Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving the Double-Edge Way, the seventh edition of his shaving guide for novices. His blog, Later On, reflects the variety of his interests, which include cooking, movies, Go, and the passing scene. He lives in California’s Central Coast with his wife and a large cat named Molly.

Lynn Holstein Lynn Holstein is a writer and administrator living in Israel. After earning her M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, Lynn served in administrative posts in a number of educational and cultural institutions, including the Jewish Museum, the New York Zoological Society, the New York Public Library, Harvard University, the Isabella Stewart Garden Museum, the Israel Museum, and The New York Botanical Garden. In 2000, she moved to Jerusalem, where she lived for four years while directing Israeli industrialist Stef Wertheimer’s initiative, the New Marshall Plan for the Middle East. Since 2007, she says, “I have shared both my work and my home life with him, helping him to promote his various programs. All are aimed at bringing peace to the region by educating skilled professionals, developing industrial parks, and creating jobs for all sectors of Israeli society.” In 2015, Lynn revised Stef’s very successful autobiography, adapting it for an international English readership under the title, “The Habit of Labor.” Her book, “Transcending Tradition: 40 Artisans of Israel,” will be published in the fall of 2017 by Arnoldsche Art Publishers. My next book project will chronicle the challenges faced by women in the rapidly changing Bedouin communities of Israel’s Negev region.

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Brian Howe Brian Howe is a critic, reporter, and editor who covers culture in all its forms, from visual art and dance to music and video games. He is the managing arts and culture editor of INDY Week, the progressive alt-weekly serving Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. On the national level, he writes criticism of contemporary music for Pitchfork and SPIN. He has also contributed to Hyperallergic, Paste Magazine, Edge Magazine, Wondering Sound, Kill Screen, among others. His writing has appeared in critical anthologies such as The Poetics of American Song Lyrics and Late Century Dream: Movements in the US Indie Music Underground. Previous deep dives into how interesting things are made delved into Afrofuturist puppets, hand-lathed records, and virtual reality. For more, visit www.waxwroth.com.

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Yukari Iwatani Kane Yukari Iwatani Kane is a former staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and Reuters and the author of “Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs.” She teaches reporting at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and her work has appeared in a variety of other publications, such as NewYorker.com and the MIT Technology Review. While growing up, Yukari moved between Japan and the U.S., and she still returns to Japan once a year to satiate her hunger for good food, good drink, and good stories. For more about her, see: yukarikane.com

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Cathryn Jakobson Ramin Cathryn Jakobson Ramin is an investigative journalist who spent most of the last 15 years writing two best-selling books about healthcare—Crooked and Carved in Sand. These days, she prefers to write about travel, culture, art, craft and fascinating people. She divides her time between Northern California and New York City. In addition to exploring India, in recent years she has visited Peru, Australia, New Zealand and Morocco. She’s currently at work on a novel, and planning future trips to the Amazon, Chile, and Africa.

Janet Jarman Janet Jarman is a photojournalist and multimedia producer based in Mexico. Her work concentrates on social issues and has been featured in a range of leading publications such as The New York Times. Jarman’s photography also has won an American Photography first prize and several juried competitions. Her most recent project for The Times, “Calling the Midwife in Chiapas,” will be developed into a full-length documentary with the support of a MacArthur Foundation grant.

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Natalie Jones Natalie Jones is a reporter working in radio and print, based in Oakland, California. She has reported for NPR, KQED, and KALW in San Francisco, Aspen Public Radio in Colorado, Grist, Civil Eats and The Point Reyes Light. She loves to record sound, write succinct prose, dig up information, get the facts right, and make data look digestible. When not doing those things, she consumes large amounts of media produced by others and spends a lot of time outside, sometimes simultaneously. While she is a generalist at heart, some favorite topics to cover are health, agriculture, food, and the environment.

Molly Kinder Molly Kinder is a Senior Adviser on Work, Workers and Technology at New America. She is also a fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation and adjunct faculty at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, where she teaches a graduate seminar on the social, economic and policy implications of Artificial Intelligence. Molly is leading human-centered research on workers' perspective on automation and their motivations and constraints to opportunity. Previously, Molly served in the Obama administration as director in a new innovation program, and was co-founder and vice president of a $200-million social impact fund. She is co-author of the book, “Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health.”  Molly is an alum of the University of Notre Dame and has a Master’s degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

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Jessica Carew Kraft Jessica Carew Kraft is an independent print journalist and graphic artist in San Francisco, specializing in cultural trends and sustainability. Originally from the Midwest, Jessica trained as an anthropologist at Swarthmore College and Yale University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, theAtlantic.com, The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Grist Magazine, Yoga Journal, ARTNews and other publications. See more of her work at www.WritingKraft.com, and follow her on Twitter at @writingkraft.

Kitty Leaken Kitty Leaken, a veteran photojournalist, specializes in the art and culture of native peoples around the world. After graduating from Stanford University, she worked at newspapers in Santa Fe and then ran a nonprofit, Art Refuge, for displaced and orphaned youth in Tibet, India and Sri Lanka. Kitty has been the photographer for several books, including “Art of Exile,” “Café Pasqual’s,” “Contemporary Native American Artists,” “Kevin Red Star: Crow Indian Artist,” the upcoming “New Mexico Farm Table”, and a short film, Dance of Young Nomads.  She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has a remote straw bale cabin retreat in the mountains.

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Nancy LeBrun Nancy LeBrun is a writer and documentary film producer, whose stomping grounds have included National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. She has trekked in the footsteps of Sir Edmund Hillary in Nepal (up to a point), visited a bizarre End Times cult in Brazil, witnessed the last days of Hong Kong’s infamous Walled City and followed a raid on an illegal lion-cub hunting operation in South Africa.  She has won multiple Emmy, duPont Columbia, and Peabody awards, and now writes about whatever interests her.  Nancy comes equipped with two badly behaved dogs and a very patient husband who is a news and documentary videographer.

Shawn Linehan Shawn Linehan is a photographer based in Portland, Oregon, whose work focuses primarily on small farms and farmers. Shawn strives to create intimate, authentic images, and her photographs have recently graced two books, “The Culinary Herbal” and “Herbal Apothecary,” both published by Timber Press. You can see more of her work at www.shawnlinehan.com or at www.instagram.com/shawnlinehan

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Roberto Lovato Roberto Lovato is a writer and journalist working out of the San Francisco Writer's Grotto. Roberto is the recipient of a crisis reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, and recently completed a three-year commitment as a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley's Center for Latino Policy Research. His journalistic work spans the western hemisphere and focuses on immigration, the drug war, national security, and climate change.

Walker Macmurdo Walker Macmurdo.

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Alison Main Alison Main is a freelance writer, graphic designer, and art director. She has been published in Paleo Magazine, Notre Dame Magazine, News of Pelham, JolieTalks.com, and NaturalHealth365.com. She ghostwrites on environmental health public policy issues, and she blogs on existential topics of interest. As a creative director, Alison has designed and managed print and digital promotional campaigns for media outlets such as Advertising Age, InvestmentNews, and Pearson Education. She holds a B.A. in English and Economics from the University of Notre Dame, and a Certification in Graphic & Digital Design from Parsons School of Design. Her website is www.alisonmain.me.

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John Marcom John Marcom is an experienced journalist and magazine-industry executive. He began his career as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and a decade later went on to executive roles at Time Inc., the Financial Times and Yahoo. His consulting firm, Media BBQ, helped with Craftsmanship’s launch effort and continues to support its audience development and promotion.

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Ben Marks Ben Marks is the senior editor of CollectorsWeekly.com and an occasional contributor to WinkBooks.net. In various past lives, he’s been an editor at Sunset magazine and books, a theater critic for KQED.org, a restaurant reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and a contributor to outlets as varied as Boing Boing and The New York Times. Away from the keyboard, Marks is the vice president of The Rock Poster Society, which produces a couple of rock-poster shows per year, including its annual fall extravaganza in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Morgan McLaughlin Morgan McLaughlin.

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Mea McNeil Mea McNeil is a writer, organic farmer, and Master Beekeeper, whose work focuses on beekeeping, pollination, and sustainability. Mea has written books about wine and arthritis (the latter used at a Harvard teaching clinic), as well as two books of mythology which she illustrated. One is a block-printed orihon, the other was awarded the Aesop Accolade from the American Folklore Association. Mea spent a year living on an Israeli kibbutz and, back when one still could, she hitched overland from Lebanon through Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the way to Japan. There, she lived in a school for tea ceremony and picked up an enduring meditation practice. She has also spent 12 years writing, crafting, and performing rod and shadow puppet plays based on mythology in an NEA-supported touring troupe that represented the U.S. at a festival in France. She later traveled the world to explore the synapses between ritual and theater. Mea recently completed an MFA in narrative nonfiction writing at Mills College, where she won the Teppola Nonfiction Writing Prize. She lives in Marin with her husband and youngest son in a strawbale house. One wall of the house is pictured here. (Its rust color comes from ferrous oxide, which is sold as a fertilizer.)

Eli Mikiten Eli Mikiten is a Berkeley, California based photographer whose work includes sports, architecture, portraiture and the performing arts. He is an avid cyclist and chef, and is a student at San Francisco Waldorf High School.

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David Munro David Munro is a writer and filmmaker who changes story mediums like a chameleon at a Pride parade. His latest project, Stand Up Planet, is a semi-scripted documentary about a new generation of global comedians sparking change through humor. It was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is airing on Participant Media’s Pivot TV. David’s debut feature, Full Grown Men, won the Sundance Channel Audience Award en route to a national theatrical release, and was a critic’s pick in New York Magazine, LA Weekly, and the San Francisco Chronicle. His short films have screened at festivals worldwide, from Sundance to Berlin, leading Filmmaker Magazine to name him one of 25 New Indie Faces. Reels and more at www.madprophet.com.

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Kristin Ohlson Kristin Ohlson writes on topics ranging from proton decay to the pleasures of getting lost in Afghanistan. She has been published in The New York Times, Salon, Smithsonian, Discover, New Scientist, Gourmet, Oprah, and other print and online publications. Her magazine work has been anthologized in Salon’s “Life As We Know It,” “Best American Travel Writing 2008,” and “Best American Science Writing 2011.” Ohlson is the author of “The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet,” (Rodale, 2014), which is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Kristin is also the author of the memoir “Stalking the Divine,” which won the American Society of Journalists and Authors Best Nonfiction Book Award in 2004, and co-author of the 2007 New York Times bestselling book, “Kabul Beauty School.”

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Todd Oppenheimer Todd Oppenheimer, the founding Editor & Publisher of Craftsmanship, has been working as a journalist since 1978. The publications he has written for include The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic Monthly. He has won a variety of awards for his writing and reporting, including a National Magazine Award and a first prize from Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE). He is the author of “The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology” (Random House, 2003, 2004), which was a finalist for IRE’s investigative book award.  Todd has been writing about unusual artisans since 2008, when he profiled Bob Kramer, a master bladesmith, for The New Yorker. An expanded version of that story, entitled “The Kitchen Bladesmith,” is now in our pages. Todd lives in San Francisco with his wife and two boys, and is a long-time member of the now-fabled Writers Grotto.

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Sarah Pollock Sarah Pollock is a widely published writer, whose work has appeared in anthologies, magazines, literary journals, and newspapers. She has been senior editor at Mother Jones, editor-in-chief at Pacific Discovery (the natural history magazine of the California Academy of Sciences), and a staff writer at the Hartford Courant, the Oakland Tribune, and the famed Long Island Newsday. For many years Sarah headed the journalism program at Mills College. She is active nationally with issues of diversity and integrity in journalism, and supports local news by serving on the board of the Bay City News Foundation in Oakland, California. A member of The Writers Grotto in San Francisco and a life-long Californian, she is married to a Norwegian and has spent decades summering in rural Norway. This article for Craftsmanship was born of her affection for her part-time home.

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Tim Redmond Tim Redmond is editor of 48hills.org, San Francisco's independent, progressive digital daily newspaper. He's been a political reporter and editor for more than 30 years, most of that time with the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Tim has won more than 50 local and national awards for investigative reporting, editorial writing, and other journalistic endeavors. He lives in San Francisco and drinks nice bourbon and cheap beer.

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Andy Rieber Andy Rieber is a freelance writer, photographer, public speaker, and public lands consultant living in Adel, Oregon, a remote town near the state’s southern border. She specializes in ranching, livestock, agriculture, and rural Americana, and also day-works on local ranches. Andy’s writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Wired Magazine, American Cowboy, Working Ranch Magazine, Western Livestock Journal, and Jefferson Monthly. Andy's other work can be found on her home page: https://andyrieber.com

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Gary Rogowski Gary Rogowski gained a degree in literature from Reed College, then took his training straight to the quiet of a craftsman’s bench. A self-taught woodworker, he has designed and built furniture for 40 years in Portland, Oregon, for private clients, galleries, and public commissions. In 1991, he won the Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship in Crafts. Six years later, he founded The Northwest Woodworking Studio, where he is the Director. Gary is a Contributing Editor for Fine Woodworking Magazine and the author of numerous articles, videos, and two books on woodworking. On a recent trip to Scotland, the Icelandic volcano exploded and his heart landed, by reason of a flight delay, in Paris. Gary travels there frequently now to breathe in fresh old ideas and forms. He recently gave the Ecole-Boulle’s first conference in English on the subject of purpose vs. intention. He is currently working on a novel about comedy and revenge. Follow Gary on Twitter at @GaryRogowski.

Riccardo Roiter Rigoni Riccardo Roiter Rigoni is a native of Venice, Italy, who has worked as a photographer since 2001. He has been a contributor to a range of books, magazines, and newspapers and is the author of the books,  “Venezia  Sensation” (2008), and “Venice Timeless Moments” (2012). He shot the world’s first photo of a mask over the Venetian sky. “Every photograph is like a bag full of letters with different recipients,” Rigoni says. “The photographer is only the postman.”

Thomas Rollins Thomas Rollins has been working as a photographer for over 30 years, specializing in commercial, travel, fine art, and other areas of photography. His work has taken him to all seven continents, reaching from the Arctic to the plains of Mongolia. Tom is based in Columbia, Illinois.

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Rollo Romig Rollo Romig is a native Detroiter and a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine. He has been a news reporter for the The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh and an editorial staffer at The New Yorker, where he wrote essays for the online edition and criticism for the magazine. He teaches journalism at New York University and otherwise lives in India.

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Lori Rotenberk Lori Rotenberk is a Chicago-based journalist who has been on staff at several major daily newspapers. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Grist, Civil Eats, Next City and onEarth.