Thanks to all who applied to join this year’s panel of Midwest Voices writers.

To all applicants and others who want to express a public opinion, we invite you to write letters to the editor, join the debates on the Editorial Board blog or submit an As I See It essay.

Please welcome our new panel of columnists and bloggers, and watch for their columns each Saturday.

Carol Dark Ayres

Residence: Leavenworth, Kan.

Work experience: Retired from education where she taught music, was an academic librarian, grant writer and director of the Leavenworth Schools Education Foundation. She is the author of “Lincoln and Kansas,” 2001.

Interests: Gardening, tennis, politics, piano and KU basketball.

Jeff Bowles

Residence: Kansas City

Work experience: Spent five years in medical and pharmaceutical sales before opening a marketing and promotions company with his business partner in 2004, PROforma Promotionally Yours.

Interests: With three daughters ages 3, 4 and 7, his interests are almost exclusively devoted to doll houses, princesses and Disney movies. When not chauffeuring daughters to soccer, dance, tennis and Girl Scouts, he and his wife spend their time daydreaming about what their own interests used to be and what they might be again in the future.

Justin Dyer

Residence: Columbia, Mo.

Work experience: Assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri. Grew up in Olathe and attended the University of Oklahoma on a wrestling scholarship before completing graduate school at the University of Texas.

Interests: Spending time with wife and two sons, reading, biking on the Katy Trail, wrestling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

G.D. Granger

Residence: Kansas City

Work experience: Unit supervisor for the Missouri Department of Corrections. After receiving a master’s degree she started with Park University in 2004 in the Department of Criminal Justice and now is a part-time senior adjunct instructor. She serves as a volunteer on the Kansas City Police Department Task Force Committee, working with people trying to bring together their communities.

Interests: Loves to read and write poetry, enjoys reading historical fiction and, of course, likes to watch all the crime shows. Loves SEC football — Hotty Toddy Ole Miss! Likes gardening. Grandchild is just too stinkin’ cute! Loves husband, family, friends, Kansas City and church family.

Kelly Luck

Residence: Kansas City

Work experience: Spent most of working life in one aspect or another of information technology, from frontline support to network administration to programming.

Interests: Writing, photography, home improvement, live theater, gallery hopping.

Saralee Rhoads

Residence: Sibley, Mo.

Work experience: Sometimes worked for money, but most adult years worked for love. Served as an emergency room nurse, a surgical nurse, a homeschool advocate and founder of Families for Home Education, a homeschool mother, and now a home school nana. Also has a bead business. Can’t bring about world peace, but tries to take care of her own little corner of the world.

Interests: Enjoys reading, knitting in the winter and gardening in the summer. With her husband, she spends enormous amounts of time with six grandchildren, and family vacations with adult children and their families.

Keith Schwanz

Residence: Overland Park

Work experience: Assistant dean at Nazarene Theological Seminary and teaches courses in worship and pastoral ministry. Prior to moving to Kansas in 2001, served as a pastor for congregations in Oregon and Washington. Graduate degrees are in church music. Published books and articles on worship and edited a French hymnal.

Interests: In November 2012 he participated in the National Novel Writing Month. Participants around world wrote a collective 3,288,976,325 words. He contributed 51,601 words as he drafted his first novel. Wife is an avid quilter. He has started designing the quilts she makes for their grandchildren.

Robert Westfall

Residence: Kansas City

Work experience: A graduate of the University of Missouri, he is founder and chief strategist of Instinct, an innovation and design firm in Kansas City. Instinct’s mission is to improve the human experience through better products, processes and policies.

Interest: Devotes time to a love of music, fitness, current affairs and overpriced coffee beverages. He also has plans to write a book, possibly about overpriced coffee beverages.

Roger C. Williams Jr.

Residence: Lee’s Summit

Work experience: A retired principal, counselor and instrumental music teacher. His career as an educator has been filled with intelligent students, master teachers and supportive parents.

Interests: Reading, cooking, opera, theater, dance, jazz, art and the challenge of trying to improve miserable golfing skills.

Cindy Frewen Wuellner

Residence: Leawood

Work experience: An architect and urban futurist, she consults and writes about 21st century cities and teaches at the University of Houston graduate program in strategic forecasting. She began designing log cabins, later becoming lead architect on the Ilus W. Davis Park, Kansas City Zoo exhibits and Whittaker U.S. Courthouse interiors. She chairs the Association of Professional Futurists and is on the board of the Kansas City Design Center.

Interests: An avid runner and owner of 3,000 books, she gardens, travels, follows Jayhawk basketball, and plays golf poorly.