Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey is aware that her name is long. If it bothers you, you can call her Jill, like everyone else. She has been writing for Phillyist since its inception in the summer of 2005, and began to share editorial duties in early 2006. When not trolling the city for terrible grammar or sitting in a darkened theatre, you can find Jill at her NoLibs townhome with Ross (the one with the drinking problem, below) and their two cats, Jack and Simon. Although Phillyist consumes many of her waking hours, it is not, in fact, her fulltime job. Jill is employed at a Philly-based communications firm that she puts extra hours in at because she actually enjoys her job. Most "Phillyisting" happens between 7PM and 1AM.

Jill does not sleep.

Angela is a junkie for the written word, but also loves movies, music, and most of all, food. Though she often dreams of far-off lands, she has always called the Philadelphia area home. It is her mission in life to enforce proper apostrophe placement. She does not like writing about herself in the third person.

Joe Ross lives in the limbo between Pennsport and Queen Village, runs Linux on his home computer and is one of those people that reads The Catcher in the Rye once a year. His New Year's resolution is to spend half the time he uses tweaking the CSS at his own blog, The Rotten Word, actually writing for Phillyist. By day, he works for the housing authority. By night, he studies for the LSAT, always trying to come one step closer to his dream of someday becoming Harvey Birdman. He walks to work and tries not to belch, doing his part to mitigate humanity's raping and pillaging of the planet. He is a Gemini, a vegetarian, and has a watch that connects via USB cable to any modern computer and contains 2 gigabytes of flash memory. If you don't know what that means, you're probably the kind of person that would call him a geek. He doesn't believe in reincarnation, Elvis, or Internet Explorer.

He has been accused of verbosity.

When she's not sipping Ketel from a hand-painted martini glass or bopping around town in Chucks and a Motorhead t-shirt, Pencopal is chained to a desk somewhere in the fourth circle of hell. Her interests include fire breathing, gang fights, and shirt lifting in public places. Someday she plans on trading in her business casual attire for sun salutations and a yoga mat.

Ross was happy to mooch off of Editor Jill's free tickets to concerts, but then she told him that if he wanted to keep going to shows for free, he'd have to write some of them up. He's okay with that, though, because it lets him pretend he's some kind of cool rock journalist. (Of course, then he wakes up in the morning and has to go do a "real job.") Aside from music, Ross has a strong affinity for Iron Chef and reality shows that appear on Bravo and VH1. Clearly, there's no accounting for taste.

Neil Arnold lives in Kent, England and has a penchant for sinister folklore, glam rock music, hairspray, H.P. Lovecraft, and Twin Peaks. He is the author of Monster! The A-Z Of Zooform Phenomena, which he describes as "...National Geographic meets Marc Bolan," and lives opposite a haunted castle with his vampish go-go girlfriend Jemma. Ever since the age of nine years old, he's always believed in monsters more than himself!

Stephanie spends most of her time writing, both at her day job at an advertising company and at night for various blogs, websites and print media. She googles everything (including herself), watches too many crime and medical shows on TV and occasionally thinks about going to the gym. Misspelled words and homeless animals make her sad. Margaritas and bacon make her happy (but not mixed together, because that would be weird). There might be incriminating photos of her on the internet but you'll probably never find them.

Joyce is a transplant from Western PA that still, 20 years on, insists on saying "gumbands" and "you'uns," and has complicated sports-team loyalties. (Go, Steelers. When they're winning.)

She spends an inordinate amount of her daytime hours answering questions about dead people and how to find them. On any given evening, you can find her in some dive bar listening to a band with a Shiner in hand, making her best kitchen attempt at vegetarian haggis, or perfecting her butterfly stroke.

Lenny Campello is far too old and too busy to be writing for Phillyst, but when he's not hawking other people's artwork at art fairs, or writing about art in his own blog or making a ton of money selling his own artwork, he still manages to find time to visit as many art galleries and museums as possible and to continue his never ending search for the perfect carrot cake.

Joanne Jordan is obsessed with all things food and culinary related. She partly blames this on being neglected in the oral stage of infancy (lack of a silver spoon) and has been trying to recover ever since childhood. A Philadelphia transplant, she has lived here long enough to know it’s a city worth writing about when it comes to restaurants, drinking and entertaining. As a result, she can usually be found roaming DiBruno’s, returning an unsatisfactory dish at a restaurant or throwing parties, where the wine flows freely, the music is loud and nothing is ever burned. Her number one job is to make people happy one stomach at a time. Her number two job is to make money by helping others make money through public relations. She is recently married and wants to start her own blog, but for now is satisfied with writing posts for Phillyist and occasionally for her husband’s popular blog.

Meghan Ziegler thinks sarcasm should probably be an organized religion. When not swearing at football or baseball, she can usually be found writing love sonnets to the inventor of the DVR. She watches entirely too much TV, reads more than the Surgeon General’s daily recommended allowance of books, listens to an absolutely obscene amount of music, and probably hates your favorite band. In short, pop culture ate her life. She’d consider selling her soul for a Phillies postseason appearance. She’d definitely sell it for Chase Utley, not because he’s hot but because he’s an awesome player (no, really). Her husband is strangely okay with that.

John graduated from the University of Pennsylvania this past May. He's worked as a writer and editor for 34th Street Magazine, and also has had worked published in The Evening Bulletin and at CHUD.com. Living in Philadelphia his entire life, John does not understand travel concepts like "airplanes" and "interstate highways".

After escaping the wilds of Northeast Pennsylvania in 1990, Nicole settled into Philly. When not obsessively reading newspapers and screeching about politics, Nicole can be found knitting or spinning yarn, growing rogue broccoli, and lusting over the boys in the cheese cave at DiBruno's. A former Temple Owl, if you give Nicole a bit too much to drink she will perform the fight song for you. She deeply misses Dobbs on South Street.

Katie graduated from Penn in 2006 with a double major in Theatre Arts and Afro-American Studies. She is now putting her degrees to good use by working in the soul-stealing field of retail. When not asking wealthy old Rittenhouse ladies if they want their purchases in a gift box, Katie can be found doing just about anything the Vagabond Acting Troupe asks her to, or in a variety of bars, clubs and pubs throughout town. One time, she played a man-eating bear in a show. The End.

Jim is the evil half of a pair of identical twins (it's the beard that gives him away) who is, nevertheless, known to some as Jesus, probably because of his (admittedly deliberately cultivated) resemblance to a certain Jewish carpenter (he's an agnostic, but he likes Jesus's style). He works in Philly as a web developer, but on the side he fulfills his insatiable urge to write with Phillyist (where every recommend he gets on one of his posts fills him with unmitigated joy). While not coding or blogging controversial opinions on arts and entertainment (here, on his own web journal, or on his Twitter feed), he likes to read books, blogs, and various other internet sites; spend time with his friends, family, and especially his lovely wife; play video games; watch TV and movies; listen to music; and, if there's time left over, eat and sleep.

Star C. Foster was a slightly agoraphobic introvert with an inexplicable drive to "hang out with people" and "do stuff." Besides reading, video-game playing, movie watching, and planning supreme universal domination, Star passed (an alarming amount of) her time online. When not posting here, she was generally waxing rhapsodic about gadgets for Shiny Shiny or panicking about the impending robotic invasion on her blog, Sarcasmo's Corner.

Remembering Star
Contribute to the memorial scholarship fund