About the Contributors Lisa Clister Brown is a native Pittsburgher who left the area just long enough to find a mate outside the Western Pennsylvania gene pool. She is currently the editor and art director of a small community magazine and recently completed a young adult novel. When she is not writing, she practices yoga, torments her kids, and eats chocolate chip cookies. David C. Madden once got a haircut from a Tunisian with a bull tattoo. Of course he overpaid. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, at the Great Plains Home for Friendless Youth. Jessica Mesman, upon completing this essay, discovered she was a religion writer. Her work is forthcoming in Elle and Brevity: A Concise Journal of Literary Nonfiction. She writes a monthly column about reverting to Catholicism for Godspy: Faith at the Edge. She lives in Pittsburgh, where she is the managing editor of the literary magazine Creative Nonfiction. Scott Morris has been making life difficult for himself in Pittsburgh for thirty years. Alternately a painter, draughtsman, and designer, writing is by far the most problematic and troublesome path Scott has gone down. He loves it to death. "Directions" will continue as a serial in coming issues of The New Yinzer. Jennifer Schaupp, a 2003 Carnegie Mellon graduate, is a freelance writer. Recently, she had an article published in Small Town Life. Her other passion is theatre. She co-directed Mt. Alvernia High School's 2004 spring production. She plans to blend theatre and writing in her future endeavors.