Front left rotating clockwise: Barbara Link, Deb Marois, Tom Fante, Anne Da Vigo, Shauna Smith, Virginia Kidd, and Teresa Thompson.

Anne Da Vigo spent 30 years as a journalist and public relations professional. Her free-lance work has appeared in the Sacramento Bee, the Boston Globe and Ms. magazine. Her short story, "Two Women," was published in the literary magazine, Out of Line. She has read her fiction on KVPR's program, Valley Writers Read, and on the CD, "Light of Day."

Tom Fante is a retired government worker with grown children. He is active, cheerful now that he is retired, a non-smoker, and an amateur writer. He likes obscure literary works, wine, travel to nearby places, foreign films, and friends.

Virginia Kidd is a professor of communication studies at California State University Sacramento. She is the co-author of COP Talk: Essential Communication Skills for Community Policing. She has written several as-yet-unpublished mystery novels; undaunted by publishing challenges, she is writing two more. Her Web site, www.csus.edu/indiv/k/kiddv/creativesolutions/, celebrates individual efforts to solve problems. She loves chocolate, children, cats, conversation, and the sense of "flow" when writing goes well.

Barbara Link is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. She was first-place winner in the graduate short story category of the CSU, Sacramento's Bazzanella Literary Awards competition. She has read her short story, "Chokecherry Girl," on the KVPR program, Valley Writers Read. Her poetry has appeared in American River Review, Hardpan, Animas, Earth's Daughters, and other publications. She just received an honorable mention in the Sacramento Poetry Center Contest for her poem, "Montana Wheat Field."

Deb Marois is a consultant who assists government agencies and nonprofit organizations that are working to improve community health. She specializes in group facilitation and training that helps people work collaboratively, engage civic participation, build on assets, and develop strategic plans. Her master's thesis, Beyond Polarities: Collaboration and Conflict in Community Health Partnerships, is her most recent writing project comm-org.wisc.edu/papers2006/marois.htm. Deb also works as a facilitator/mediator at the Center for Collaborative Policy www.csus.edu/ccp/ and teaches at UC Davis in the Community and Regional Development Department.

Shauna Smith, MSW, a family therapist in private practice in Sacramento for over twenty-five years, is the author of Making Peace With Your Adult Children: A Guide To Family Healing (HarperCollins) and various articles, stories, and poems. Co-founder and coordinator of Therapists for Social Responsibility www.therapistsforsocialresponsibility.org, she is currently focused on integrating her poetic and activist work.

Teresa Thompson is an accountant by day and a closet writer by night. She enjoys poetry, nature essays, and memoir. She believes poetry should be part of our daily life. If you listen closely, you can hear poetry in song lyrics, advertisements, and even in everyday conversations.