Sonya Huber

Sonya Huber is a creative writing teacher at Fairfield University, and has written two books of memoir: <i>Opa Nobody</i> and <i>Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir</i>, both published by University of Nebraska Press. She wrote this essay at age 34, as she "shyly began to admit that I was a Buddhist." Read more at sonyahuber.com.

Marloes Lasker

Marloes started her zen practice in 2001 as a student of Nico Tydeman Sensei, and became ordained as a monk in 2010. She is legally deafblind from Usher Syndrome. Marloes lives with her husband and her retired guide dog in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Joshua Shin

Joshua Shin switched majors five times at three different schools before earning his associate's degree in Psychology at Bakersfield College in 2010. He is currently attending California State University, Bakersfield, where he is working on his BA in Sociology.

Carol Lorton Shilor

Carol is 31 and lives in Lafayette, Indiana, with her husband. She has degrees in psychology, criminology and philosophy, and calls herself "a curious mind. A skeptic, but a hopeless romantic. A realist, but a dreamer."

Ishita Gupta

Ishita Gupta is the founder and publisher of <a href="http://fearlessstories.com/">Fear.less Magazine</a>, an online magazine that profiles leading thinkers and their experiences overcoming fear. She lives in New York City.

Sarah Fox

Sarah Fox calls herself an overeducated waitress. She has a master’s degree in history and folklore, and lives in Seattle with her husband, their two-year-old son and their two giant dogs. She slings food for a living, cultivates a sprawling vegetable garden, and participates in the Seattle sangha, and is currently working on a book-length manuscript exploring ordinary people’s stories of nuclear contamination in the American West.

Chris W.

Chris W. is a writer, reader, traveller, cook, and any combination of these he can manage. When not pursuing those, he works as a psychologist and author, teaching dharma to young minds.

Susan Yao

Susan Yao

Susan Yao (she/hers) has been a middle school educator for 12 years, most recently serving as the Middle School Head at Friends Academy in Dartmouth, MA. She has practiced Buddhism for 17 years in Korean Zen and Insight traditions. She is currently exploring a Buddhist educational program for K-8 students, the Laughing Rivers School. She lives on a homestead with her family in Vermont.

Ben J. Hutchison

"I am a husband. I am a father. I sit zazen daily," says Ben Hutchison. He lives in Cincinnati.

Duc Hong Ta

Duc Hong Ta is an inmate in a California State Prison, where he's serving 35 to life.

Angela Allan

Angela Allan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in English and a concentration in creative writing. She has walked a pilgrimage across Spain, researched dragonfly thermoregulation in Guyana, taught English in Ecuador, backpacked through Europe and Morocco, and trekked across icebergs off the Southern coast of Argentina. She writes stories, rhyming poems and creative non-fiction. Read more at her <a href="http://angelaallan.com/">website</a>.

Leslie Gossett

"A student of all things human, I find myself coming to the spaces between," Leslie Gossett says. "I write, breathe, think, feel, learn, fear, love, lose, eat, practice yoga, meditate, and sleep." She recently relocated to the Bay Area, and attends school for Holistic Health.

Sam Guthrie

Sam Guthrie is a writer and Buddhist practitioner living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Nick Walser

Nick Walser lives in Brighton, England. He's practiced Zen for about six years, and took the bodhisattva vows recently. <a href="http://thestinkofzen.blogspot.ca/" />Read more from Nick at his blog</a>.

Ralph Steele

Ralph Steele

Ralph Steele is the founder of Life Transition Therapy, a trauma-healing center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A longtime practitioner in the Theravada tradition, he has been teaching and leading programs since 1987.

Michael Felberbaum

Michael Felberbaum lives in Hamden, Connecticut, with his wife and two kids. Meditation has been a daily part of his life for more than 5 years, but he's been studying since his early teens. He's currently a graduate student at Wesleyan University and works full-time at Yale University in the Development Office.