diff --git a/RELEASE.txt b/RELEASE.txt
index 38fb9533..64ab2e6d 100644
--- a/RELEASE.txt
+++ b/RELEASE.txt
@@ -5,8 +5,8 @@ How to make a new release of ``skimage``
 
 - Update release notes.
 
-  - To show a list contributors, run ``doc/release/contributors.py <commit>``,
-    where ``<commit>`` is the first commit since the previous release.
+  - To show a list of contributors and changes, run
+    ``doc/release/contribs.py <tag of prev release>``.
 
 - Update the version number in ``setup.py`` and ``bento.info`` and commit
 
diff --git a/doc/release/release_0.9.txt b/doc/release/release_0.9.txt
index 38bebac7..c1e5d482 100644
--- a/doc/release/release_0.9.txt
+++ b/doc/release/release_0.9.txt
@@ -15,10 +15,76 @@ For more information, examples, and documentation, please visit our website:
 New Features
 ------------
 
+`scikit-image` now runs without translation under both Python 2 and 3.
+
+In addition to several bug fixes, speed improvements and examples, the 204 pull
+requests merged for this release include the following new features (PR number
+in brackets):
+
+Feature detection:
+
+- BRIEF feature descriptor (#591)
+- Censure (STAR) Feature Detector (#668)
+- Octagon structural element (#669)
+- Add non rotation invariant uniform LBPs (#704)
+
+Segmentation:
+
+- 3D support in SLIC segmentation (#546)
+- SLIC voxel spacing (#719)
+- Generalized anisotropic spacing support for random_walker (#775)
+- Yen threshold method (#686)
+
+Transforms and filters:
+
+- SART algorithm for tomography reconstruction (#584)
+- Gabor filters (#371)
+- Hough transform for ellipses (#597)
+- Fast resampling of nD arrays (#511)
+- Rotation axis center for Radon transforms with inverses. (#654)
+- Reconstruction circle in inverse Radon transform (#567)
+- Pixelwise image adjustment curves and methods (#505)
+
+Color and noise:
+
+- Add deltaE color comparison and lab2lch conversion (#665)
+- Isotropic denoising (#653)
+- Generator to add various types of random noise to images (#625)
+- Color deconvolution for immunohistochemical images (#441)
+- Color label visualization (#485)
+
+Drawing and visualization:
+
+- Wu's anti-aliased circle, line, bezier curve (#709)
+- Linked image viewers and docked plugins (#575)
+- Rotated ellipse + bezier curve drawing (#510)
+- PySide & PyQt4 compatibility in skimage-viewer (#551)
+
+Other:
+
+- Python 3 support without 2to3. (#620)
+- 3D Marching Cubes (#469)
+- Line, Circle, Ellipse total least squares fitting and RANSAC algorithm (#440)
+- N-dimensional array padding (#577)
+- Add a wrapper around `scipy.ndimage.gaussian_filter` with useful default behaviors. (#712)
+- Predefined structuring elements for 3D morphology (#484)
 
 
-Additionally, this release adds lots of bug fixes, new examples, and
-performance enhancements.
+API changes
+-----------
+
+The following backward-incompatible API changes were made between 0.8 and 0.9:
+
+- No longer wrap ``imread`` output in an ``Image`` class
+- Change default value of `sigma` parameter in ``skimage.segmentation.slic``
+  to 0
+- ``hough_circle`` now returns a stack of arrays that are the same size as the
+  input image. Set the ``full_output`` flag to True for the old behavior.
+- The following functions were deprecated over two releases:
+  `skimage.filter.denoise_tv_chambolle`,
+  `skimage.morphology.is_local_maximum`, `skimage.transform.hough`,
+  `skimage.transform.probabilistic_hough`,`skimage.transform.hough_peaks`.
+  Their functionality still exists, but under different names.
 
 
 Contributors to this release
@@ -60,5 +126,5 @@ surname:
 - Stéfan van der Walt
 - Josh Warner
 - Adam Wisniewski
-- Zetian Yang
+- Yang Zetian
 - Tony S Yu