Rita Bayer

Freedom-loving Rita has embarked on a new career path as writer, editor, and proofreader. Working in a setting of her choice, for example, in the blissful shade of a forest during the hot days of summer, is her favorite feature about free-lancing. She finds energy and inspiration while walking along the seashore with a backpack containing pen and paper as her steady companion. Her most recent published work can be found in alive Magazine and Healthy Living Guide. Constantly on the lookout for a new challenge, Rita is happy to be onboard the LooseLeaf team — her latest venture.

Kat Code

Kat Code is a girl
who can write with a twirl
of the deeds that seek
to move her week.
She nails words onto a board,
or flails them, just like a sword —
carefully, with all her might,
noting truth and all that’s right.
For every word has its reason,
and each reason’s a season
to be elevated and celebrated,
derided, or debated.

Janice Everett

What inspired Janice to set out on a new career path at this stage in her life? It’s a mystery. Or rather, it’s a fondness for solving a mystery that fires her enthusiasm for researching facts, ideas, and opinions: for tracking down answers to questions large and small. So the question became: How could she combine her love for clarity and the written word into her professional life? The answer: Janice enrolled in the Print Futures program where she is learning the skills needed to enter the fields of writing, editing, and research.

Lynne Graham

From research laboratories and university lecture theatres to ceramic studios and galleries, Lynne spent many years with one foot in the sciences and the other in the arts. These two worlds meshed when she entered Print Futures. Since then she has been able to balance her competing interests in technology and creativity, documenting processes, weaving magical scenarios, and designing information for both print and electronic media. Lynne sees web technology as an extension of the writing process — another tool in her writer’s arsenal.

Amanda Grondahl

Amanda is a 24-year-old writer and editor. (It’s only now that she’s being paid for doing both that she’s developed sufficient gumption to call herself either.) She joins the LooseLeaf team thrilled to be part of a forum that encourages others to be patient enough to write and brave enough to share. After all, Amanda has writing and reading to thank for her sanity as well as her shrinking credit card debts: When she can’t afford to be lying on the beach at Cartagena, strolling Mexico-city markets or hiking around the Isle of Mann, it is writing that allows her to travel, explore, heal and grow.

Kate Lancaster

Kate is a recovering actor and a wife who has recently taken a lover. Her husband notices the long hours she spends away from home, the faraway look in her eyes, the urgency with which she runs from his embrace. He knows her heart wanders, and yet, he accepts it. Why? What kind of man willingly lets his wife stray so? A man who knows that this new love is merely a transformation of an old love: the love of words. Now instead of playing the words of others, Kate is playing with words of her own.

Vanessa Simpson

Vanessa is back for a second year as a member of the LooseLeaf editorial team. She's happy to reprise her column, "The Writer's Web," as well as take on the added role of managing editor. When Vanessa isn't hard at work writing, editing, researching, and designing, she's out with her honeybees. "Beekeeping," she says, "helps me relax and focus. You'd be surprised with the ideas you can come up with looking at a frame of bees."

Vince Yim

Vince likes to write things
Like weblogs and articles
For Fangoria