We have 170 local authors in our directory!
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| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Rodolfo Alvarado | Rodolfo Alvarado is an eclectic American writer living in Michigan. His fictional work has been published by Arte Público Press' Piñata Books, The Americas Review, The Latino Book Review, Texas A&M University Press, Caballo Press, and Somos en escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine. His academic works have been published by the University of Michigan Press, Michigan State University Press, The Texas Observer, Texas A&M University Press, and Alpha Books of New York. In 2020 and 2021, he was named an Emerging Latino Author by The Latino Book Review. His biography, The Untold Story of Joe Hernandez: The Voice of Santa Anita won the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award. He holds a Fine Arts Ph.D. and an MFA in Playwriting from Texas Tech University, as well as an MA in History from Eastern Michigan University, where he was a University Fellow and a Parks/King/Chavez Fellow. | |
Jasmin An | Jasmine An comes from the Midwest. Her poetry and non-fiction can be found in Black Warrior Review’s Boyfriend Village, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nat. Brut, Waxwing and Best New Poets 2020. She is author of two chapbooks of poetry, Naming the No-Name Woman (Two Sylvias Press, 2016) and Monkey Was Here (Porkbelly Press, 2020), and Poetry Editor at Agape Editions. Her PhD dissertation in English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan focuses on 21st century poets who co-opt bureaucratic paperwork as a response to the impact of U.S. empire in Southeast Asia. Her academic work of writing about poems and poets she admires is one way of honoring and caring for the community through which she’s learned to encounter and understand the world. Jasmine is a member of the Digital Inequality Lab, an interdisciplinary group of scholars exploring questions of power and our digital reality through humanities and culture centered methods. They published a co-authored "Lag Manifesto" meditating on the intersections between the twinned pandemics of COVID-19 and anti-Black racism with the journal Afterimage. Jasmine presented at the 2020 Council of Thai Studies Annual Gathering, where her paper, “a handful of syllables tossed back across the water:” negotiating diasporic Thai American gender identity through poetic practice, won the Graduate Student Paper Prize. | |
Carol E. Anderson | Carol E. Anderson is a life coach and former organizational consultant who grew up in Detroit. She has traveled the world extensively for work and pleasure and philanthropy. She holds a doctorate in Spiritual Studies, and masters degrees in Organizational Development, Film and Video, and Creative Nonfiction. Carol is the founder of Rebellious Dreamers, a twenty-year strong non-profit organization that has helped women over 35 realize dreams they’d deferred and women of all ages come into their own. She is the author of the essay “What is it About Memoir?” in The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey, and co-author of the essay “Deeper Power” in Enlightened Power: How Women are Transforming the Practice of Leadership.” Carol’s passions are photography, travel and empowering women to live their dreams. Her goal at this stage is to live with a peaceful heart, which she cultivates through walks in nature, a meditation practice, and heartfelt conversation with friends. She lives with the love of her life, Archer Christian, and their sassy, lovable pup, Saxon, in a nature sanctuary in Ann Arbor, MI. |  |
DC Armijo | A lifelong Michigan resident, DC Armijo is an accomplished executive with over 25 years of nonprofit leadership experience. He is married, has a college-aged daughter, and currently splits his time between Milford, Michigan and Naples, Florida. DC has a bachelor’s degree from Oakland University and a master’s in health services administration from the University of Michigan. After beginning his career in hospital administration, he transitioned to working for nonprofits focused on environmental and public health concerns. DC’s dedication to purpose-driven work is founded in a childhood marked by poverty and a father’s illness. Those early challenges gave him the lifelong gifts of resilience, empathy, and purpose. He believes the nonprofit sector has grown increasingly important because of declines in governmental effectiveness and floundering public policy. As a result, we need more nonprofit leaders who are driven and equipped to make a difference. DC’s book, The Nonprofit Dilemma explores why nonprofit management is so challenging. It is based on the simple idea that nonprofit leaders frequently encounter a choice between advancing their organization's impact or its financial health. Nearly every decision comes with the same underlying question—which aim to prioritize? |  |
Julie Babcock | Julie Babcock is a poet and fiction writer who has lived in Ann Arbor since 2004. Her hybrid poetry collection, Rules for Rearrangement, wrought in response to the sudden death of her husband, won the 2019 Kithara Book Award and was published in December 2020. She is also the author of Autoplay, described as both an ode and an elegy to her Midwestern upbringing. Her poetry and fiction appear in The Rumpus, PANK, december magazine, and has been anthologized in New Poetry from the Midwest. She is the recipient of a Vermont Studio fiction fellowship and several Pushcart nominations. She is faculty in the Minor in Writing Program at University of Michigan and is deeply committed to helping students connect their embodied experiences to research-based academic work to support stories that have been silenced and/or suppressed. | |
John U. Bacon | New York Times bestselling author John U. Bacon has written thirteen books on sports, business, and history, seven of them national bestsellers. His previous book, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High School Hockey Team, was featured in the New York Times, and on Good Morning America, which called him “the REAL Ted Lasso”. He freelances for The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, and others, appears often on TV, including HBO, ESPN, and the Big Ten Network, and delivers weekly essays for Michigan Radio and occasionally NPR, where he won the prize for the nation’s best commentary in 2014. Bacon is a popular corporate speaker and leadership consultant, who occasionally teaches at the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award, given to one instructor annually for “Excellence in Teaching”. In 2019 he was appointed trustee of Michigan Technological University, where he delivered the commencement speech in 2022. John is a decent Spanish speaker, an average hockey player, and a poor piano player, but he still enjoys all three. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife and son. | |
Natalie Bakopoulos | Natalie Bakopoulos is the author of two novels: Scorpionfish (Tin House, 2020), which was a finalist for The Bridge/Il Ponte prize (2021), and The Green Shore (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Her work has appeared in Tin House, VQR, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, Granta, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, MQR, The Mississippi Review, O. Henry Prize Stories, and various other publications. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan, and in 2015 she was a Fulbright scholar in Athens. She’s an associate professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and a faculty member of the summer program Writing Workshops in Greece. | |
John Baldoni | Ranked globally as a top ten executive and leadership coach, John Baldoni is an internationally-recognized keynote speaker and author of 16 books that have been translated into ten languages. In 2022, Thinkers 360 named John a Top 10 Thought Leader for both Leadership and Management. Also in 2022, Global Gurus ranked John a Top 20 global leadership expert, a list he has been on since 2007. John lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife Gail who is a retired health care executive. They are the parents of two grown children and two young grandchildren. For fun John golfs and plays piano at an area hospital. | |
Gregg Barak | Gregg Barak is an Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Eastern Michigan University. Barak is an award-winning author and editor of books on crime, justice, media, violence, criminal law, homeless- ness, and human rights. He is also the co-founder and North American Editor of the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime. | |
Bernice Baran | Bernice Baran started her website, Bakery Baran, as a place to document all of the adventures in her everyday life. It was a creative outlet on days off of working as a nurse, and a place to come and look back on 10 years from now and see all her photos and thoughts from this time in her life. That quickly and exclusively turned into her baking and sharing her recipes. Over the last five years, Bernice stopped nursing, had two babies, and took Baran Bakery full-time. She wrote a cookbook, Frosted, and hosts cake decorating workshops. She can't wait to see what the next five years bring, but whatever it is, she knows it'll be sweet. |  |
Kimberley Barker | Kimberley Barker holds a Ph.D. in organization development from Benedictine University, Lisle, IL, and an MBA from Hawai’i Pacific University, Honolulu, HI. She has had extensive experience in organization development and change, cultural competence, human resources, global leadership, dilemma reconciliation, influence and negotiation management, teams, business research, and global communication. She teaches as a Full-Time Lecturer at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan. Her latest book is now available, “YOU Can Create Positive Change at Work,” by Kimberley Barker and Mary Ceccanese. |  |
Patrick Barry | Patrick Barry is a Clinical Assistant Professor and the Director of Digital Academic Initiatives at the University of Michigan Law School, as well as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of several books on advocacy and has recently launched a series of online courses called “Good with Words” on the educational platform Coursera. Among Professor Barry’s teaching awards are the Wayne Booth Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Prize, and the Outstanding Research Mentor Award. He has also served as the law school’s Faculty Ally for Diversity and been selected as a Faculty Fellow by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s Center for Educational Outreach. A member of the California bar who regularly partners with law firms, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, he is currently working on a project that uses immersive technology to help lawyers and other professionals give and receive more effective feedback. He has a Ph.D. in English in addition to a law degree, and in college he was an All-American soccer player. https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/patrick-barry | |
Avik Basu | Avik Basu is a researcher and lecturer at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. His research has included understanding the differences between experts and laypeople in environmental decision-making, designing sustainable developments to be more acceptable to rural residents, promoting the adoption of sustainable transportation, and designing environments that simultaneously enhance individual and communal well-being. Along with Rachel Kaplan, he is co-editor of Fostering Reasonableness: Supportive Environments for Bringing out our Best which describes Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE), a human needs framework that is the foundational theory of reDirect. |  |
Ruth Behar | Ruth Behar was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in New York. She is a cultural anthropologist, poet, and writer of fiction for young people. Behar is known for the compassion she brings to her quest to understand the depth of the human experience. She has lived in Spain and Mexico and returns often to Cuba to build bridges around culture and art. She writes about her journeys in her ethnographies, which include An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba and Traveling Heavy: A Memoir in Between Journeys. The 25th anniversary edition of her classic book, The Vulnerable Observer Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart, was published in 2022. Her bilingual poetry appears in Everything I Kept/Todo lo que guardé. Behar won the Pura Belpré Author Medal for her debut middle grade novel, Lucky Broken Girl, and her second novel, Letters from Cuba, is a Sydney Taylor Notable Book and received an International Latino Book Award. Behar's debut picture book, Tia Fortuna's New Home, and in Spanish, El nuevo hogar de Tía Fortuna, a Cuban Sephardic story about intergenerational memory. A second picture book, Pepita Meets Bebita, is co-authored with her son, Gabriel Frye-Behar. Behar is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a "Great Immigrant" by the Carnegie Corporation. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and is the James W. Fernandez Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. | |
Brenda E. Bentley | What started as a hobby during her children’s teen years turned into a passion project for Brenda E. Bentley who wrote River Walks Ann Arbor; Walking Loops Along the Huron River. She spent many days poring over historical maps at the Bentley Library, and many, many days exploring on foot all the streets of Ann Arbor to design pleasing walking loops. Brenda got to know the trees of the city and its wonderful pioneer history. During this time, she fell in love with the ice-age history of the surface geology of Michigan. She decided to make the moraines and river a central theme of the book, interlaced with one-page stories of cultural history. Since the book project, Brenda has continued to explore and learn about the wonderful glacial deposits covering Michigan. She has a rudimentary Youtube channel, Brenda Ellen Bentley, on which (for example) she posts videos focussed on the glacial remains seen from the Kiwanis Rail Trail between Tecumseh and Adrian. She and her husband moved to Ann Arbor in 1992, raised their children there, and now are delighted to be grandparents. They also carry the agony of losing their beautiful 18-year-old son in 2007. They look daily toward spiritual sources of strength along this rugged path. |  |
Angela K. Berent | Angela K. Berent always wanted to write, but she couldn’t find the time. Life on a lake in Chelsea with her husband and their teenage twin sons offers plenty of pleasant distractions. Finally, she discovered that she could write it all in short lists of three. As a teacher, she finds that creating lists is a great way to help reluctant middle school students write. A Midwesterner at heart, influenced by a few good years in California, her stories and lists are endless. Her goal is to help readers capture their memories quickly and easily. There is never a shortage of writing material, only of precious writing time! Everyone has stories to write, and that is why Berent created List Your Life: A Modern-Day Memoir, Trace Your Travels: An Adventure Journal, and Notes from the Nursery: A Keepsake. |  |
Rebecca Biber | Rebecca Biber is a collaborative pianist and music educator residing in Ann Arbor. She holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the U of M School of Music. After teaching in public schools, Rebecca opened her own music studio where she tutors piano students of all ages. She has appeared with numerous local theatre companies and choirs. Rebecca's first book of poetry, Technical Solace, was published in 2017 by Fifth Avenue Press. It touches on themes of nature, music, and Jewish family history. Her poems have also appeared in the literary magazines Delmar, Lilith, and RE:AL. She is currently an MFA candidate in the creative writing program at Queens University of Charlotte, where she has served on the editorial staff of Qu magazine. Rebecca loves living in Ann Arbor, where she enjoys the spacious parks, vibrant restaurants, and friendly neighborhoods. |  |
Shanelle Boluyt | Shanelle Boluyt grew up in Dexter, MI. After spending her teenage years swearing she would get as far away from home as possible, she landed... one town over, in Chelsea, MI, where she now resides with her husband, child, and cat. Shanelle graduated from the Fiction Writing program at Columbia College Chicago and serves as the IT Director for the Chelsea Writers' Workshop. Her shorter works have been published in the Huron River Review and Hairtrigger. Her debut novel, Intersections, was published in 2019. |  |
T. Casey Brennan | T. Casey Brennan is an Ann Arbor comic book writer and author. He wrote for Warren Publishing's horror comic anthologies Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. He also wrote for DC’s House of Mystery and Archie Comics’ Red Circle Sorcery. His full length novel Lesbo Cult! was published in 1979 and his story Carrier of the Serpent is included in Warren Eerie Archives Volume Eight, available at the Ann Arbor Public Library. | |
Vicki Brett-Gach | Vicki Brett-Gach is the creator of the Ann Arbor Vegan Kitchen blog, and the author of "The Plant-Based for Life Cookbook: Deliciously Simple Recipes to Nourish, Comfort, Energize and Renew” – published by Brooklyn Writers Press. Vicki is a Whole-Food Plant-Based Culinary Instructor, Certified Personal Chef, and Master-Certified Vegan Lifestyle Coach, and has been trained in Nutrition for a Healthy Heart, and in Dietary Therapy for Reversing Common Diseases. Vicki is Forks Over Knives Plant-Based Certified, and a graduate of Dr. McDougall’s Starch Solution Certification program, with certificates in Culinary Coaching (through Harvard Medical School and The Institute of Lifestyle Medicine), in Plant-Based Nutrition (through the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies), and in Wellness Counseling (through Cornell University). |  |
Don Brown | Don Brown dedicates his career to 'helping people with people' in leadership, sales, and customer service. Bilingual and experienced at the executive and line-level alike, you see the results of his work across dozens of industries, including brewing, automotive, airline, banking, and medical equipment. Speaking, writing, coaching, and selling to companies including Ford Motor Company, Anheuser-Busch, United Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Jaguar Cars, Hilton Hotels, and many, many more, Don takes great pride in long-standing customer relationships (some running well over twenty years). Don cherishes his start with Paul Hersey and Marshall Goldsmith and has authored books with each; What Got You Here Won't Get You There - in Sales! with Marshall, and Situational Service- Customer Care for the Practitioner with Dr. Hersey. Don's next book, Bring Out the Best in Every Employee-How to Engage Your Whole Team by Making Every Leadership Moment Count, was then followed by Simple Truths in Music and Life, a work that has led him to include the guitar in special keynote offerings. | |
John F. Buckley | John F. Buckley (he/him) came from Michigan, went to California for a couple of decades, and then returned to Ann Arbor, where he attended the Helen Zell Writers' Program before becoming a lecturer in the English department at the University of Michigan. His publications include several hundred poems, two chapbooks, the collection Sky Sandwiches, and with Martin Ott, Poets’ Guide to America and Yankee Broadcast Network. He needs to update his personal website. He’s the fiction editor for the journal Third Wednesday. Once he regains his gumption, he'd like to return to attending (and sometimes performing at) local literary events. | |
Jean Buescher Bartlett | Jean Buescher Bartlett is an artist, designer, and bookbinder working in mixed media, handmade books, cards & hand tools, who was born in Cincinnati, OH in 1956. She received a BS in Design from the University of Cincinnati and worked for Herman Miller in Zeeland, MI. A love of reading and writing led her to pursue an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama. She owned and operated Bloodroot Press from 1990 to 2020, focusing on limited edition, letterpress printed and illustrated, handbound artists’ books. Jean has also worked as an art & design librarian, interior designer, manager of Drew’s Bookshop in Cincinnati, fine art photography gallery director, author events coordinator at Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, curator, book designer, instructor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit for 15 years and lecturer at the University of Michigan while maintaining a steady studio practice. She has exhibited her work internationally and it is in over 50 public collections worldwide, including: the New York Public Library, the Detroit Public Library, the University of Michigan and Stanford University Special Collections, the Victoria and Albert Museum Library, Wellesley College Special Collections, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Clark Art Institute. | |
Jennifer Burd | Jennifer Burd has had poetry published in numerous print and online journals. She is author of a full-length book of poems, Body and Echo (2010; PlainView Press), a chapbook of original poems set to music by Laszlo Slomovits, Receiving the Shore (2016, Little Light Publications), and a book of creative nonfiction, Daily Bread: A Portrait of Homeless Men & Women of Lenawee County, Michigan (Bottom Dog Press; 2009). Her newest collection of poetry, Days’ Late Blue, is scheduled to be published by Cherry Grove Editions in July 2017. She is co-author of a children's play based on Patricia Polacco's book I Can Hear the Sun, which was produced by Wild Swan Theatre of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2015. Burd received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in Seattle. She currently teaches writing and literature classes at Jackson College, Jackson, Michigan, and at Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, as well as creative writing classes online through The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. | |
Irene Butter | Irene Butter was born in Berlin and grew up as a Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Europe. A survivor of two concentration camps, she came to the US in 1945. Since the late 80s Irene has been teaching students about the Holocaust and the lessons she learned during those traumatic years. Her memoir, Shores Beyond Shores, details her journey. Irene is a co-founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Medal & Lecture series at the University of Michigan, and one of the founders of Zeitouna, an Arab/Jewish Women's Dialogue group in Ann Arbor. |  |
Marcus Cafagna | Marcus Cafagna is the author of three books of poetry, The Broken World (University of Illinois Press, 1996), a National Poetry Series selection, Roman Fever (Invisible Cities Press, 2001), and All the Rage in the Afterlife This Season (Finishing Line Press, 2023). His poems have also appeared in The American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Harvard Review, Quarterly West, Rattle, The Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review, among numerous other journals and anthologies. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan to a family of immigrants, many of his relatives fled fascism in Europe to settle in Detroit or New York. He teaches poetry writing at Missouri State University. He moved to the Ozarks from Philadelphia, where he coordinated the Painted Bride Art Center Poetry Series, and from Pittsburgh, where he served as a visiting writer at Carnegie Mellon University. | |
Barbara Cain | I am a retired clinician having served over 40 years at the University of Michigan`s Psychological clinic. I conducted a private psychotherapy practice for more than 50 years in Ann Arbor. I have published five children`s books, two of which received awards. My publication credits include articles in scientific journals as well as commercial magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Science section, and The Christian Science Monitor among others. |  |
David Calonne | David Stephen Calonne is senior lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University. He is author of several works, including R. Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self, published by University Press of Mississippi; William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being; The Spiritual Imagination of the Beats; Diane di Prima: Visionary Poetics and the Hidden Religions; and biographies of Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller. Calonne is also editor of five volumes of uncollected Bukowski stories and essays as well as Conversations with Gary Snyder and Conversations with Allen Ginsberg, both published by University Press of Mississippi. He previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago. | |
Cassandra Caverhill | Cassandra Caverhill is a Canadian-American poet and editor. She is the author of the chapbook Mayflies (Finishing Line Press) and a winner of the 2021 AWP Intro Journals Award. Her work has most recently appeared in Atticus Review, Peninsula Poets, Coastal Shelf, Last Resort Literary Review, Reed Magazine, and Into the Void. She is a graduate of Bowling Green State University’s MFA program in Poetry. Cassandra earned a certificate in Editing from the University of Chicago and an honors BA in Drama and Communication Studies from the University of Windsor. Born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, Cassandra lives, writes, and edits with her husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. |  |
Mary Ceccanese | Mary Ceccanese is the owner and principal consultant of Dynamic Connections LLC. Celebrating almost fifteen years of presenting interactive seminars and workshops to all levels of staff in both for-profit and non-profit organizations, she engages attendees with research-based practices applied to work-life scenarios. She has a BA in Human Resource Administration and recently retired from working at the University of Michigan for more than thirty years. In 2019 she was presented with a University of Michigan Staff Impact Award. In addition, she was one of the 2019 "Top Ten Business Women" in the country of the American Business Women's Association. Mary published her first book for staff titled, YOU Can Create Positive Change at Work, and in 2020 released her first product, High-Quality Connection Cards. |  |
Marion Chard | Marion lives in a rural town in northern Michigan with her husband Lee. Among her numerous interests are writing, history, music, cooking, science, perennial gardening, photography, website design, reading, birding, and spending time with her many outdoor chipmunks. She also loves to watch veterinary, and zoo shows on TV and cute animal videos on YouTube. The word 'boredom' does not exist in her dictionary. She has a great sense of humor and love to surround herself with positive, like-minded people. | |
Devika Dibya Choudhuri | Devika Dibya Choudhuri is a Professor of Counseling at Eastern Michigan University. A Professional Counselor (MI/CT), Board-Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor, Approved Clinical Supervisor, and Certified EMDR Therapist. She has 20 years of clinical experience with refugees, immigrant and multicultural populations, as well as trauma survivors of violence, sexual assault, grief, and loss. Her scholarship focuses on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access issues in counseling, supervision and pedagogy. She served as Director and Chair on the National Board of Certified Counselors from 2009-2015, the Minority Fellowship Advisory Council from 2015-2018, and as President of the Association for Specialists in Group Work in 2020. She is an Editorial Board member of the Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling, the Journal of Multicultural Counseling & Development, and a Reviewer for Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. She is a recipient of several awards and a 2015 American Counseling Association Fellow. | |
Amy Clarice | Amy Clarice (formerly Shrodes) (pronouns: She/Her/Hers) is the co-author of the children’s book Lost and Found Cat: The True Story of Kunkush's Incredible Journey. Amy traveled to Lesbos, Greece in 2015 on sabbatical where she discovered Kunkush, shunned by the island cats. While serving in the front lines of the refugee crisis, she cared for Kunkush for more than a month, devising a social media campaign to find his family with a team of volunteers. Shortly after Valentine’s Day, 2016, Kunkush was reunited with his family in Norway. Amy lives in Ypsilanti with her dog Zola on her urban farm, which includes two ferrets, two rabbits, and a flock of hens. She is working on a series of young adult books with a family from Afghanistan that is now living in Germany. |  |
Crysta K. Coburn | Crysta K. Coburn has been writing award-winning stories for most of her life. Her first short story was published at the age of sixteen after winning runner-up in a local writing contest. She earned her bachelor's degree in creative writing from Western Michigan University in 2005. She is a journalist, fiction writer, poet, playwright, editor, podcast co-host, and one-time rock lyricist. She served as editor for The Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales; Cogs, Crowns, and Carriages; and Gears, Ghouls, and Gauges (the latter two with Phoebe Darqueling). | |
Juan Cole | Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Cole has devoted his career to understanding the Middle East and the Muslim world more generally, and to critically evaluating its relationship with the North Atlantic states. His most recent book is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian. Among his other recent works are Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires (Bold Type Books, 2018) and The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East (Simon & Schuster, 2014). He has translated works of Lebanese-American author Kahlil Gibran. He has appeared widely on media, including the PBS NewsHour, ABC World News Tonight, Nightline, the Today Show, Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes' All In, CNN, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others. He has written about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, the Gulf and South Asia and about both extremist groups and peace movements. He is proprietor of the Informed Comment news and analysis site. Cole conducts his research in Arabic, Persian and Urdu and Turkish as well as several European languages. He knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for more than a decade, and continues to travel widely there. He has written, edited or translated 21 books and authored over 100 articles and chapters. | |
Rick Coppens | Rick Coppens is a retired sales rep who lives on a small farm in southeastern Michigan with his wife, Kathy, a former Ann Arbor educator. He is a musician, songwriter, and storyteller whose free time includes traveling the country with Kathy and spending time with their five wonderful children and four beautiful grandkids. | |
Dave Coverly | Dave Coverly, a native of Plainwell, Michigan, earned his BS with a double major in Imaginative Writing and Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University in 1987, and received his MA in Creative Writing from Indiana University in 1993. In 2011, EMU awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts. He is the creator of the cartoon panel Speed Bump, which runs internationally in about 400 newspapers and websites, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Detroit Free Press. His cartoons have also appeared in The New Yorker, USA Today, The New York Times, Newsweek, Esquire, and were a regular feature in Parade. Speed Bump has been named "Best in Newspaper Panels" by the National Cartoonists Society in 1995, 2003, 2014, and 2022. In 2009 the same organization gave him its highest honor, the prestigious Reuben Award, for "Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year". He has also traveled extensively with the USO, drawing cartoons for wounded soldiers and those stationed at bases in the Middle East. Coverly is also the author and/or illustrator of numerous children's books published by Macmillan, including Sue MacDonald Had a Book (with Jim Tobin), The Very Inappropriate Word (with Jim Tobin), and How to Care for Your Pet T-Rex (with Ken Baker). His chapter book series began with Night of the Living Worms: The Misadventures of Speed Bump & Slingshot, and continued with Night of the Living Shadows, and Night of the Living Zombie Bugs. His most recent cartoon collection is Speed Bump: A 25th Anniversary Collection (IDW). His cartoons are also featured on hundreds of greeting cards with NobleWorks, RSVP (including calendars), American Greetings, and Woodmansterne (UK). He has two daughters, Alayna and Simone, and lives with his wife, Chris in Ann Arbor, Michigan. | |
Tammy Coxen | Tammy Coxen is the founder and Chief Tasting Officer of Tammy's Tastings, where she's been sharing her enthusiasm for food and drink for over 15 years. Since 2011 she has been teaching interactive hands-on cocktail classes to individuals, groups, and companies for events ranging from parties to corporate team building. Starting in 2020 she also took those classes online, exploring the history, stories, and mixing techniques behind some of the world’s most famous cocktails. She is the co-author of the cocktail book Cheers to Michigan, co-host of a regular cocktail segment on Michigan Radio (her local NPR affiliate), and has written for Hour Detroit magazine and other publications. She'll be launching the My Tiny Bottles podcast, where she'll explore her grandmother's legacy of miniature liquor bottles, one tiny bottle at a time. |  |
Ellen Craine | Grief and Loss Expert Ellen Craine is a licensed clinical and macro social worker in the State of Michigan, founder of Craine Counseling and Consulting Group, and has over 25 years of experience working with couples, families, groups, and individuals in a variety of capacities. She has been a divorce and family mediator and parenting coordinator, working with high-conflict parents to improve their ability to co-parent more effectively. She is a relationship and life coach and therapist, incorporating the science of success with her social work experience. Ellen is a #1 International Bestselling author of Women Who Dream, Women Who Empower, and Leading with Legacy. All are in the Kate Butler’s Impact Book Series. Ellen writes on the topics of childhood cancer, her breast cancer journey, the loss of her husband to a brain tumor––and how to rise above the challenges presented by life. She is a Co-Associate Producer of the documentary, Authentic Conversations: Deep Talk with the Masters, written, directed, and produced by LA Emmy-nominated Dr. Angela Sadler Williamson. Ellen is a co-coordinating producer on the documentary, Authentic Conversations: Voices Rise in Unity, also written, directed, and produced by LA Emmy-nominated Dr. Angela Sadler Williamson. This is a documentary about social justice and pays tribute to the civil rights icon, Rosa Parks. | |
Liz Crowe | A Kentucky native and graduate of the University of Louisville living in South Carolina, Liz Crowe lived in Ann Arbor for almost 20 years. Many of Liz’s books take place in southeast Michigan, and one in Ann Arbor specifically. She's spent her time as a three-continent expat trailing spouse, mom of three, real estate agent, brewery owner and bar manager, and is currently a digital marketing and fundraising consultant, in addition to being an award-winning author. With stories set in breweries, on the soccer pitch, inside fictional television stations and successful real estate offices, and even in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are compelling and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished. | |
Shutta Crum | Shutta Crum is a long-time resident of Ann Arbor who now divides her time between Ann Arbor and St. Augustine, Florida. She served as a public librarian at both the South Lyon Public Library and the Ann Arbor District Library for more than twenty four years and was awarded the Michigan Library Association Award of Merit as the youth librarian of the year in 2002. She is the author of many middle grade novels, picture books, books of poetry, poems, and magazine articles, including THUNDER-BOOMER! an American Library Association and a Smithsonian Magazine “Notable Book” of the year. She’s won four Royal Palm Literary awards, with a gold for her chapbook When You Get Here (Poems for Adults), and she has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. In 2005 Shutta was invited to read at the White House. In 2010 she presented to students in Japan, hosted by the Dept. of Defense Schools. Now she writes the monthly Wordsmith’s Playground newsletter for writers, blogs for the Florida Writers Association, and writes a column on craft for the OPAP magazine (Of Poets & Poetry) for the Florida State Poet’s Association. Her presentations include author talks, lectures, and workshops for writers, teachers, and librarians. | |
Samuel Damren | Samuel Damren is a lifelong Michigan resident, attorney, and author, his legal career spanning over four decades. Damren earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in cultural anthropology with a minor in music composition and received his Juris Doctor from Wayne State University. He served as a private mediator and arbitrator focused on commercial litigation representing prominent entrepreneurs and companies in Southeastern Michigan. Damren lectured on prosecutorial ethics at the University of Michigan Law School and served pro bono as a hearing panelist on the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board for over twenty years. Since retirement, he has been contributing periodic commentaries on a variety of subjects with a legal bent to the Detroit Legal News and its family of newspapers in Michigan. Damren is the author of the books, What Justice Looks Like and Wintercut. A twenty-fifth anniversary ebook publication of Wintercut has been released. Damren is also the author of numerous articles in law reviews and historical journals discussing the intersection of legal theories and law with other disciplines and landmark legal cases. He and his wife are members of the Henry P. Tappan Society at the University of Michigan and benefactors of the Dziewiatkowski Awards at the Medical and Dental Schools.They are the parents of three children. Upon returning to Ann Arbor in 2018, they now live two miles from the home he grew up in and on the edge of the same forest that he walked through as a boy. | |
Jenna Dawson | As a young mother of two and an Early Childhood Educator, Jenna Dawson has always found play to be the most magical experience persons of all ages can have. She spends much of her days curiously exploring the world with her children, learning and teaching as she goes. | Kindness-Cover.pdf |
Raymond De Young | Raymond De Young is a broadly trained psychologist, planner, and engineer. He is Associate Professor of Environmental Psychology and Planning in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. He focuses on the process of re-localization, a response to emerging biophysical limits and the consequences of having deeply disrupted the Earth's ecosystems. He applies conservation and environmental psychology to the challenge of helping people envision and adopt behaviors that support an urgent transition to a life lived within local resource limits. Despite what for some people is a dismal forecast, his work is decidedly hopeful. His theoretical and empirical research includes exploring how people pre-familiarize themselves with the coming resource downshift, motivate stewardship, and use nature to restore the mental vitality needed for responding to the lean yet fascinating times ahead. Current projects include examining the psychological foundations of behavioral entrepreneurship and voluntary simplicity, and the benefits embedded in pursuing a low-input agrarian society. | |
Carlina Duan | Carlina Duan is a writer-educator from Michigan, and the author of the poetry collections I Wore My Blackest Hair (Little A, 2017) and Alien Miss (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2021). Carlina received her M.F.A. in Poetry from Vanderbilt University. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Michigan’s Joint Program in English and Education and works as the Poetry Editor at Michigan Quarterly Review. Carlina’s poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Narrative Magazine, Poets.org, The Rumpus, and other publications. Her writing has been supported with residencies and awards from Tin House, the Academy of American Poets, the U.S. Fulbright Program, Signal Fire Arts, the Hopwood Program, Good Hart Artist Residency, and Willapa Bay AiR. Among many things, she loves river walks, snail mail, and being a sister. | |
Aaron P. Dworkin | Best-selling writer and host of the nationally-broadcast Arts Engines show, Aaron P. Dworkin was President Obama's first appointment to the National Council on the Arts. He is a former dean and current Professor of Arts Leadership & Entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He is the founder of the Sphinx Organization, with the mission of transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. He has collaborated with a breadth of artists including Yo-Yo Ma and Anna Deveare Smith. He has been featured in several publications and received numerous awards including Newsweek's "15 People Who Make America Great” and BET's History Makers in the Making Award. Aaron is a frequent speaker at several universities and conferences and a member of the Recording Academy (GRAMMYs), in addition to serving on the board of multiple art organizations including the Ann Arbor Foundation. He is an avid kayaker, poker player, and boater, having captained multiple crossings of the Gulfstream. He is married to Afa Sadykhly Dworkin, a prominent international arts leader who serves as President and Artistic Director of the Sphinx Organization, and has two awesome sons, Noah Still and Amani Jaise. They reside in Michigan with their two Savannah cats, Mocha and Pekoe, and English Cream Retriever, Rondo. | |
Ashlee Edens | Ashlee Edens has always been a writer; from writing for the teen paper at the Oklahoman to self-publishing two poetry collections since 2017. She is a mother who enjoyed exploring Michigan with her young daughters. She wanted to create the Ann Arbor Adventure series as a way to relive those memories over and over again. Ann Arbor will always have a special place in her heart. | |
Kathrine Edgren | Katherine Edgren's book, Keeping Out the Noise, was published by Kelsay Books in 2022. In addition to her book, The Grain Beneath the Gloss, published by Finishing Line Press, she has two chapbooks: Long Division and Transports. She has appeared in numerous journals including: Coe Review, Moss Piglet, Christian Science Monitor, Birmingham Poetry Review, Peninsula Poets, the Decadent Review, Light, Orchards Poetry Journal, and Barbaric Yawp. She served as a Guest Associate Editor for Third Wednesday, and has a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan. Katherine lives in Dexter, Michigan. | |
Ron Eglash | Ron Eglash grew up in California during the 1960s, where a mix of bohemian scientists and social activism inspired his undergraduate studies in cybernetics. Following a masters in systems engineering, he briefly worked in the silicon valley’s chip manufacturing industry, and then returned for a doctorate in the History of Consciousness program at UCSC. Encouraged by his advisor Donna Haraway to “stay in touch with your inner scientist”, Eglash began an investigation of fractal patterns in aerial photos of African villages. A postdoctoral Fulbright in West and Central Africa allowed him a year to conduct ethnographic research, where he documented how indigenous concepts of recursion created fractal patterns throughout African design practices. His book African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design became a TED talk with over 1.5 million views; a simulation used in math and computing education; and a broad influence in black studies. Fractals inspired by Eglash’s work now appear in black literature such as Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti; in AfroFuturist arts, and even in contemporary African architecture. His most recent work, “Generative Justice,” develops an alternative economic theory. “Both the political right and political left” Eglash explains “are focused on value extraction: socialism to the state and capitalism to corporations.” His alternative model would keep value in unalienated forms at the grassroots, and circulate it rather than extract it--a process he maintains is already happening with the rise of makerspaces, urban agriculture and the “artisanal economy”. His work in this area examines how digital fabrication, AI and other innovations can be used to nurture and sustain generative justice. | |
Amy Emberling | Amy Emberling has been an avid food lover and baker since her childhood in Nova Scotia, Canada. After high school, she moved to Cambridge, MA, and received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. She then followed her passion for food and learned to cook and bake at L’ecole de Gastronomie Francaise at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, France and Michigan restaurants. In 1999 she received her MBA from Columbia University. Amy came to Zingerman’s Bakehouse when it opened in 1992 as one of the original bakers on the staff of eight. She soon became the first manager of the bread bakery, and then the manager of the pastry kitchen. In 2000, Amy became Managing Partner at Zingerman’s Bakehouse. She is the co-author of the cookbook Zingerman’s Bakehouse. As well as teaching at BAKE! Amy presents for ZingTrain on business practices. A few of the Bakehouse items she is personally responsible for developing are the Old School Apple Pie, Buenos Aires Brownies, and our Gingerbread Coffee Cake. In addition to developing items, Amy is a promoter of classic bakery favorites from many cultures and has brought traditional standards to the Bakehouse such as Paris Brest, Hummingbird Cake, and Dobos Torta. Amy lives in Ann Arbor with her husband Geoff, their two grown children, Jake and Ruby, daughter in-law Emily and grandson Miles. |  |
Ann S. Epstein | Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, craft essays, and book reviews. Her awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination for creative nonfiction, the Walter Sullivan prize in fiction, and an Editors’ Choice selection by Historical Novel Review. Her stories and nonfiction work appeared in over 30 publications. In addition to writing, she has a PhD in developmental psychology and MFA in fiber art. Why “asewovenwords.com” as a domain name? Weaving and writing have much in common. The texture and pattern of cloth are like the formal structure of a story. A fabric’s colors evoke emotion, as does a narrative’s tone. Both deal in images, concrete or abstract. Weaving the many layers of a complex twill is like creating characters with complexity and depth. Facing an empty loom or a blank page, the artist conjures something from nothing and releases it to the world. | |
Sarah Erdreich | Sarah Erdreich was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She earned her B.A. in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Michigan and her M.A. in Publishing at Emerson College. Sarah’s first book, GENERATION ROE: INSIDE THE FUTURE OF THE PRO-CHOICE MOVEMENT, was published by Seven Stories Press in 2013. Her essays about motherhood, reproductive rights, and healthcare have appeared in numerous publications, including Slate, HuffPost, and Romper. Her essay “The Day I Decided to Walk into a Psych Ward” was Slate’s most-popular story for 2022. https://womensmediacenter.com/shesource/expert/sarah-erdreich |  |
Sam Erman | Sam Erman, is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. A scholar of law and history, his research and teaching focuses on citizenship, the Constitution, empire, race, and legal change. He is the author of Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018). The book lays out the tragic story of how the United States denied Puerto Ricans full citizenship following annexation of the island in 1898. As America became an overseas empire, a handful of remarkable Puerto Ricans debated with U.S. legislators, presidents, judges, and others over who was a citizen and what citizenship meant. This struggle caused a fundamental shift in constitutional jurisprudence: away from the post-Civil War regime of citizenship, rights, and statehood and toward doctrines that accommodated racist imperial governance. https://www.amazon.com/Almost-Citizens-Constitution-Studies-History/dp/1108415490 |  |
Kim Fairley | Kim Fairley is an artist and memoirist based in Michigan who writes about wrestling with secrets and the power of dealing with trauma. Her most recent memoir, Swimming for My Life, chronicles her experience as a competitive swimmer during the early years of Title IX. She has written two other books: Shooting Out the Lights: A Memoir and Boreal Ties: Photographs and Two Diaries of the 1901 Peary Relief Expedition. She grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended the University of Southern California. She holds an MFA in mixed media from the University of Michigan. | |
Rohn Federbush | Happily writing away for sixty years, Rohn Federbush has published short stories and self-published fifteen novels. Her paranormal romance novels, mysteries and Michigan based historical romances all contain inspirational messages. Born on a farm in southern Illinois, Rohn finished her Masters in Creative Writing in 1995 from Eastern University. She retired as an administrator of the University of Michigan’s Applied Physics PhD. Program. Rohn has several award winning books including In Lincoln’s Shadow which was a finalist of Daphne de Maurier and RWA Atlanta Contest, Maui Time won third place Virginia’s Marlene RWA Contest, The Prom Dress won honorable mention in the Iowa Literary Awards, and The Bus Orphan was a semifinalist in the James Fellowship of Sister of Oregon. Rohn’s complete list of publications, conferences, editor, agent appointments, memberships, and travel history are listed in her resume. When she’s not writing, Rohn loves painting, which she also sells at local street and book fairs. | |
Michael A. Ferro | Born and bred in the Detroit area, Michael A. Ferro attended Michigan State University and received a degree in Creative Writing. Michael’s novel, TITLE 13, was published by Harvard Square Editions and chosen as a Best Book of 2018 by the Emerging Writers Network. He was named as a finalist by Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award, received the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction, and was nominated for The Pushcart Prize. Michael is also a musician, satirist, and humorist, as well as a book reviewer and critic for numerous literary journals and an editor with the Chicago Writers Association. He is a former sportswriter and a Features Writer for CBS and CBS Detroit, and a national music and sports columnist with AXS. Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the Midwest; he currently resides in rural Ann Arbor, Michigan. |  |
Jay Fiondella | Jay was born in a suburb of New Haven, Connecticut. He moved to Detroit in the early 1980s to pursue his dream of becoming a successful rock drummer. Thank God he became an electrician, or as he puts it, “My kids would have starved!” He has three children, Shane, Corin, and Victoria, who enjoy poking fun at their dad. He is also a proud grandfather of three beautiful young ladies who happen to love their Poppa Jay! He has continued his musical endeavors through the years and began entertaining thoughts of pursuing his love for prose, starting with his first book, But Dad, a personal narrative of fatherhood. In 2023, he retired, and he and his wife, Jenine, moved to Northern Michigan, where he continues to follow his passion for writing. Project Earth is his third self-published work and his first full-length science fiction novel. He enjoys beating the drums, now governed by his aching anatomy, and is currently working on a sequel to Project Earth. | |
Dale Fisher | As perhaps the world’s only artist-photographer working almost exclusively from the air, Dale Fisher has made a career of capturing images both on film and digitally through the door of a helicopter. While skimming over his subjects at ground speeds of 120 miles per hour, he transforms freeways, construction sites, rooftops, and parked vehicles into colorful graphic patterns. At just 17, Dale headed off to join the United States Navy where he began shooting (with a camera) from the skies as an aerial reconnaissance photographer. Upon his return home from service, he worked as a photographer at the Ann Arbor News. He has traveled the country towing his helicopter and captured many of the images that are in collections. According to Dale, “Low-level helicopter photography gives a distinctive perspective unmatched by photographs taken from airplanes, drones, or from the ground.” Dale grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan and currently resides at his 200-year-old farm in Grass Lake, called Eyry of the Eagle. The name is a nod to his photographic viewpoint above (like an Eagle) and translates to “the lofty nest of a bird of prey”. While Eyry of The Eagle farm holds many tales itself — its 100 acres of woods, water and fields is also home to Dale’s art galleries, wedding venue, and the Michigan’s Center for the Photographic Arts, a 501 (C) 3 Dale founded to provide artistic mentorship for youth. Dale enjoys spending his free time with family and friends, working on his property, traveling, and photographing the beautiful sites of Michigan. |  |
Linda W. Fitzgerald | Linda Wirtanen Fitzgerald grew up in Garrison Keillor country, primarily Michigan's upper peninsula. After graduating from Northern Michigan University, she headed to Ann Arbor and a graduate fellowship at the University of Michigan. With a master's degree in hand and a national recession raging, she tried her hand at magazine editing, newspaper reporting, even script writing for sales seminars and consoled herself in off hours by devouring mystery novels. Ultimately, she found her professional home as senior copywriter in an Ann Arbor ad agency and, from there, went on to launch Fitzgerald Communications. Twenty-some years and thousands of projects later, one career goal still eluded her: she had never written a mystery novel. In the summer of 2016, she crossed that item off her life list with the publication of Death at the Doorstep, the debut adventure of Ann Arbor freelance writer and amateur sleuth Karin Niemi. The second novel in the series, A Superior Way to Die, is set in the Upper Peninsula. | |
Sara Fitzgerald | Sara Fitzgerald is a former editor and new-media developer for the Washington Post and was the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of The Michigan Daily. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1973 with a degree in history and journalism. She is also the author of Elly Peterson: “Mother” of the Moderates (University of Michigan Press, 2012) and The Poet’s Girl (Thought Catalog Books, 2020). Her current writing project is a biography of Emily Hale, the little-known muse of the poet T. S. Eliot. |  |
Doc Fletcher | Doc Fletcher was born 1954 in Detroit, Michigan near the main branch of the Rouge River. He is a 1976 graduate of Eastern Michigan University. He took his first canoe trip in 1978 on the Pere Marquette River and since has been getting in a canoe or kayak whenever possible. For Michigan-Out-Of-Doors segments, Doc joined co-host Jim Gretzinger in paddling the length of the Sturgeon River and the Pere Marquette headwaters. Doc has 6 books published about the joy of paddling rivers in Michigan and across the Midwest Michigan’s rivers. Doc has been invited to share stories from his books, primarily at Michigan libraries, on over 300 occasions since his first book was published in 2008. The Michigan Library Association honored Doc with their 2017 Author Award. A life-long Michigan resident, Doc promotes his home state on his website. | |
Matthew L.M. Fletcher | Matthew L.M. Fletcher, ’97, is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at Michigan Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of federal Indian law, American Indian tribal law, Anishinaabe legal and political philosophy, constitutional law, federal courts, and legal ethics, and he sits as the Chief Justice of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. Professor Fletcher also sits as an appellate judge for the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians, the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska, and the Tulalip Tribes. He is a member of the Grand Traverse Band. | |
Patrick Flores-Scott | Patrick Flores-Scott was a long-time public school teacher in Seattle, Washington. He’s now a stay-at-home dad and early morning writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Patrick’s first novel, Jumped In, was named to the 2014 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults list, a Walden Award finalist, a Washington Book Award winner, an NCSS/CBC Notable Book for the Social Studies, and a Bank Street College Best Books of 2014. His second novel, American Road Trip, received multiple starred reviews and is a 2019 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick, and was nominated for state lists and awards in Texas, Arizona, Washington, Connecticut and Georgia. | |
Gregory A. Fournier | Literary Classics gold medal award-winning author Gregory A. Fournier received his bachelor and master’s degrees in Language Arts from Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. A writer of creative nonfiction, his books include The Elusive Purple Gang, Zug Island, Terror In Ypsilanti, The Richard Streicher Jr. Murder and Detroit Time Capsule. Fournier writes short history posts for his Fornology.com blog, and he has appeared on the Investigation Discovery Channel as a guest expert on serial killer John Norman Collins for the series A Crime to Remember in an episode entitled “A New Kind of Monster.” Terror In Ypsilanti is currently in development for a movie or miniseries. | |
R.J. Fox | R.J. Fox is the award-winning writer of several short stories, plays, poems, a memoir, and 15 feature length screenplays. His first book – a memoir entitled Love & Vodka: My Surreal Adventures in Ukraine was previously published by Fish Out of Water Books. His debut novel Awaiting Identification was placed on MLive's top 10 Michigan books of the year. Both books – which were initially screenplays – are currently being developed into feature films. He is on board as a co-producer for Love & Vodka, as well as the writer/director/editor of several award-winning short films. He recently published a collection of essays entitled Tales From the Dork Side and his work has been published in over 30 literary magazines and journals. Fox graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English and a minor in Communications and received a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. In addition to moonlighting as a writer, independent filmmaker and saxophonist, Fox teaches film and literature in the Ann Arbor Public Schools, where he uses his own dream to inspire his students to follow their own. He has also worked in public relations at Ford Motor Company and as a newspaper reporter. He resides in Ann Arbor, MI. | |
Lauren Friedman | Lauren Friedman is a Product Designer, artist, and the author/illustrator of 50 Ways to Wear a Scarf, 50 Ways to Wear Denim, and her latest title, 50 Ways to Wear Accessories, all published by Chronicle Books. Based in Ann Arbor, MI, she is the creator of the My Closet in Sketches project, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Lucky Magazine, Travel + Leisure Magazine, and The Washington Post. Her books have sold over 200,000 copies and have been carried at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, Paper Source, Target, and retailers across the world. | |
Tracy Gallup | Tracy Gallup’s paintings and figures come to life in stories and poetry. Her most recent books are My First Book of Haiku Poems published by Tuttle Press and Paint the Night published by Fifth Avenue Press. In March 2023 Anna's Kokeshi Dolls will be released by Tuttle Publishing. Other picture books include A Roomful of Questions, Stone Crazy, Shell Crazy, Tree Crazy, Snow Crazy and King Cat published by Mackinac Island Press, a division of Charlesbridge, and Beastly Banquet published by Dial Books for Young Readers. | |
Pamela Gossiaux | Pamela Gossiaux is the international bestselling author of romance books and women's fiction, as well as several inspirational nonfiction books. Pamela is also a humorist and inspirational speaker who has been writing and working with writers for several decades. She has a dual BA degree from the University of Michigan in Creative Writing and English Language and Literature, and over 20 years of journalism writing experience. She has self-published a book on writing called Six Steps to Successful Publication. The release of The Things We Know in Part, hit the Barnes & Noble Top 100 bestseller list, as well as a #1 bestseller on Amazon in several different countries. An avid horse enthusiast, she enjoys being outdoors and working in her garden. She also loves chocolate, and prefers to curl up with a good book in her downtime. She lives and writes at her horse farm in Michigan, near the town that inspired the Russo Romantic Mystery series, with her family and a variety of pets. | |
Kay Gray | Kay Gray is originally from Los Angeles, but has chosen four seasons and adorable downtowns over fire in the hills and too much traffic. She lives in a historic home with her husband, dog, and cat, and keeps saying she will succeed at a garden next Spring, but we all know how that goes. She has short stories in Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales and Fairy Tales Punk'd. Kay is currently working furiously on scripts for her podcast Haunted Mitten, as well as clacking away at the keyboard on three other novels. | |
Bethany Grey | Bethany Grey is an author and dietitian living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her passion for storytelling began with her grandmother and matured during college, after life experience amplified the relatability of a good coming-of-age narrative. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and earned a Master of Nutrition from Case Western Reserve University. Her articles are published in Food & Nutrition Magazine. She holds a special affinity for strong matriarchs and spiritual quests, both found within her debut novel, All That We Encounter. |  |
Colby Halloran | Colby graduated from the Circle-in-the-Square Professional Acting Workshop in New York City in 1978, where she studied with Nikos Psacharopoulos. From 1977-1980 she performed at his theatre, The Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, as well as on Off-Off Broadway. In 1979 she became a company member and subsequently Co-Artistic Director of The Theatre Exchange, a 50-seat loft theatre in Lower Manhattan, founded by Charles Clubb. Mr. Clubb was killed in front of the theatre the following year, at which point Colby closed The Theatre Exchange, left the theatre and has been writing ever since. Colby has published three short stories before she turned to writing novels: “The Plateau” in The Southern Review, “The Pension Plan” in Emrys Journal and “Field and Stream” in American Chordata. In November 2024 her auto-fiction/memoir The Northeast Corner was published by Fifth Avenue Press (AADL). Locum Tenens, Portrait of a Country Doctor in Wales, about a hard-working elderly country doctor in North Wales who goes out on a series of strenuous house calls, and Bicycle Boy, A Death in the Neighborhood, about The Theatre Exchange. A third novel, Ffos-y-Rhiew, is about her friendship with an elderly farmer in Shropshire. “Bird of Passage,” her full-length play, premiered at the Bagaduce Theatre in September 2019. (birdofpassageplay.com) Colby is a Member of the Dramatist’s Guild. She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband. |  |
Lindsay-Jean Hard | Lindsay-Jean Hard is the IACP award-nominated author of Cooking with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, and Stems into Delicious Meals (inspired by her Food52 column of the same name) and co-author of a Zingerman's Bakehouse cookbook (Fall 2023). She’s a copywriter at Zingerman’s Creative Services in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she shares her passion for great food, sustainability, and community. |  |
Steven Harper Piziks | Steven Harper Piziks was born with a name that no one can reliably spell or pronounce, so he often writes under the pen name Steven Harper. He lives in Michigan with his family. When not at the keyboard, he plays the folk harp, fiddles with video games, and pretends he doesn’t talk to the household cats. In the past, he’s held jobs as a reporter, theater producer, secretary, and substitute teacher. He maintains that the most interesting thing about him is that he writes books. Steven is the creator of The Silent Empire series, the Clockwork Empire steampunk series, and the Books of Blood and Iron series for Roc Books. All four Silent Empire novels were finalists for the Spectrum Award, a first! Fortunately, his story “Eight Mile and the City” in the anthology When Worlds Collide won the 2022 Washington Science Fiction Association Award for small press. You can find him elsewhere on-line by searching for his social media. | |
Carla Harryman | Carla Harryman is a poet, experimental prose writer, essayist, performance writer, and collaborator in multi-disciplinary performance. The author of twenty-five books, she is known for her boundary breaking investigations of genre, non/narrative poetics, and text-based performances. The influence of improvised music, electronic sampling, and collaborative practices animate her recent works. Recent publications include Cloud Cantata (Pamenar, 2022); the poet's theater play Good Morning (PAJ: Journal of Performance and Art, MIT Press, 2022); and Sue in Berlin and Sue á Berlin (trans. Sabine Huynh), a collection of poetry and performance writings composed between 2001-2015 and released in 2018 by PURH "To Series" in separate English and French volumes. Other key publications in the last two decades include Adorno's Noise (2008), an experiment in prose poetry and "the essay as form," the collaborative ten-volume work, The Grand Piano: Experiments in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco 1975-1980 (completed in 2010); the poet's novel Gardener of Stars (2001); W-/M-(2013), and the essay Artifact of Hope (2017). Her awards include an artist award in poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, New York; a grant (with Erling Wald) from Opera America: Next Stage, an NEA Consortium Playwright Commission; several awards from The Foundation for Poetry; and the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished Faculty Award for Creative Activity at Eastern Michigan University. Her work has been translated into many languages and her poetry, prose and plays have been represented in over thirty national and international anthologies. | |
Merrie Haskell | Merrie Haskell's first three books are The Princess Curse, Handbook for Dragon Slayers, and The Castle Behind Thorns. She won the Schneider Family Book Award (Middle Grades) and the DetCon1 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction award, and she was twice a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Two of her books have been Junior Library Guild selections. Her short fiction has appeared in Nature, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. | |
Stephanie Heit | Stephanie Heit (she/her) is a queer disabled poet, dancer, teacher, and codirector of Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space on Anishinaabe land in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She is a Zoeglossia Fellow, bipolar, a shock/psych system survivor, a mad activist, and a member of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. Her hybrid memoir poem PSYCH MURDERS (Wayne State University Press, 2022) takes you inside psychiatric wards and shock treatments toward new futures of care. The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System, 2017) explores the seams of language, movement, and mental health difference. Her work has appeared in journals such as Orion, Sonora Review, BathHouse, Venti, Rogue Agent, Ecotone, Anomaly, and About Place. | |
Amy Hepp | Amy Hepp grew up along the Great Lakes and currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is a graduate of Purdue University and has worked in public schools for the last 11 years. Amy writes contemporary romance novellas set in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota. Her debut novella, Northern Woods, was published by the Fifth Avenue Press of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She devoured the romance genre as a sleep deprived young mother of three, needing an escape from reality. All three children are grown, but she's still a pushover for a good love story and is excited to share her love of the Boundary Waters with her readers. |  |
Peter Ho Davies | Peter Ho Davies’ most recent books are the novel A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, long-listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and The Art of Revision: The Last Word, his first work of nonfiction. His previous novel, The Fortunes, a New York Times Notable Book, won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, a London Times Best Seller, was long-listed for the Booker Prize. He has also published two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World (winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, and the Oregon Book Award) and Equal Love (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book). Davies’ work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post and TLS among others, and been anthologized in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. In 2003 Granta magazine named him among its “Best of Young British Novelists.” Davies is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts and a winner of the PEN/Malamud and PEN/Macmillan Awards. Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, he now makes his home in the US. He has taught at the University of Oregon, Northwestern and Emory University, and is currently on faculty at the University of Michigan. | |
Kelly Hoppenjans | Singer-songwriter Kelly Hoppenjans creates empowering rock, combining the spirit of riot grrrl tinged with folky introspection. The follow-up to her energetic 2019 full-length debut, OK, I Feel Better Now, her new EP Can’t Get the Dark Out dives deep into relationships, fate, and breaking free of toxic patterns. The EP is inspired in part by Hoppenjans’ journey of finding love during the pandemic: navigating online dating, confinement, and impending life changes to sustain that love. Kelly authored Kelly Hoppenjans Takes Herself Too Seriously, A Collection of Poems, Music, Lyrics and Some Real Arty Shit. "In contrast to what the title says, Hoppenjans brings a playfulness by including drawings, handwritten notes, and QR codes on the pages of the book. Poems and lyrics are distinct but morph into one form or the other when on the page or sung in a recording." —A2Pulp |  |
Sara Hughes | Associate Professor Sara Hughes studies policy agendas, policy analysis, and governance processes, focusing on decisions about water resources and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Current projects examine the political and institutional dimensions of equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water in the U.S.; the role of municipal finances in drinking water management and investments; and urban climate change governance, including equitable approaches to building urban climate resilience. | |
Christine Hume | Born into a military family and constitutionally restless, Christine Hume lived in over 25 places in the U.S. and Europe before landing in Ypsilanti. Her latest collection of essays on sex offenders and women’s bodies, Everything I Never Wanted to Know, will be available from Ohio State University Press (21st Century Essays Series). She is also the author of a lyric portrait of girlhood, Saturation Project (Solid Objects, 2021), which The New York Times says, “arrives…with the force of a hurricane,” as well as several books of poetry. She has guest edited two issues of the American Book Review, on #MeToo and Girlhood, and is currently guest editing a folio for The Hopkins Review on walking. Since 2001, she has been a faculty member in the Creative Writing program at Eastern Michigan University. | |
Linda Cotton Jeffries | My name is Linda Cotton Jeffries and I grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and for over thirty years, I taught special education in a variety of settings. I retired from teaching in 2016 and since then have gone from writing part time to writing full time. My first novels, We Thought We Knew You and Who We Might Be, were published by Fifth Avenue Press in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My novel Seeing in the Quiet was published October 1st 2021 by Sunbury Press. Strong women, suspense, and romance are the elements I most enjoy writing about! | |
David Jibson | Having grown up in rural Michigan, David Jibson now lives in Ann Arbor where he is the editor of Third Wednesday, an independent quarterly journal of literary and visual arts, a member of the Poetry Society of Michigan and a coordinator of The Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle. He retired from a long career in Social Work, most recently with a Hospice agency. His poetry has been published in dozens of journals both in print and online. David holds BA degrees in Social Work and Interdisciplinary Communications from Western Michigan University and an MSW from Michigan State University. | |
Zilka Joseph | Zilka Joseph was born in Mumbai, lived in Kolkata, and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Her work is influenced by Indian and Western cultures, and her Bene Israel roots. She has been nominated for several awards, been featured on NPR/Michigan Radio, and podcasts like Rattlecast and Culturico. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Daily, Frontier Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, Rattle, Asia Literary Review, The Punch Magazine, Poetry at Sangam, Review Americana, and in anthologies like 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium, Home: Michigan State University Libraries Short Edition, Kali Project, RESPECT: An Anthology of Detroit Music Poetry, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, and Converse: Contemporary Indian Poetry in English. Her chapbooks, Lands I Live In and What Dread, were nominated for PEN and Pushcart awards. Sharp Blue Search of Flame (Wayne State University Press) was a Foreword INDIES Award finalist. Her third chapbook Sparrows and Dust is a Notable Best Indie Award winner and a Notable Asian American Poetry Book. In Our Beautiful Bones, her newest book, is also a Foreword INDIES Award finalist, and has been nominated for PEN, Pushcart, Griffin and American Book awards. She received a Zell Fellowship, the Michael R. Gutterman Award for poetry, and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship from the University of Michigan. She teaches creative writing workshops, and is a freelance editor and manuscript advisor. | |
Shanna K. Kattari | Shanna K. Kattari, PhD, MEd, CSE, ACS (they/them/theirs) is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, and is the director of the [Sexuality | Relationships | Gender] Research Collective. A white, Jewish, nonbinary, disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, polyamorous, queer fat Femme, their practice and community background is as a board-certified sexologist, certified sexuality educator, and social justice activist. Dr. Kattari’s research focuses on three areas that often overlap; disability & ableism, sexuality & sexual health, and queer & trans affirming practice. Dr. Kattari also explores experiences of sexuality in marginalized communities, most notably disabled adults, LGBTQIA2S+ individuals, those practicing non-monogamy, and those practicing kink/Leather/BDSM. In their free time, they love to cook, garden, read, and DM a neuroqueer party of D&D. They live in Ypsilanti, and co-partner three opinionated cats and one sassy pitbull with their two partners. | |
Leah Rose Kessler | Leah Rose Kessler spent much of her childhood up a tree with a stack of books. These days, when she’s not reading or writing, she’s an on-again, off-again elementary school teacher and a lifelong biologist. She lives in Michigan with two humans and two cats, and has a soft spot for scurrying creatures of all shapes and sizes. |  |
A.H. Kim | A.H. Kim (Ann) was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. as a young child. Ann was educated at Harvard College and Berkeley Law, practiced corporate law for many years, and served as chief of staff to the CEO and head of investor relations at a Fortune 200 company. Ann is the proud mother of two sons, a long time cancer survivor, and community volunteer. After raising her family in the Bay Area, Ann and her husband now call Ann Arbor home. |  |
Kimberley Kinder | Kimberley Kinder is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and the Faculty Director for the Healthy Cities Certificate Program at the University of Michigan. Dr. Kinder has degrees in geography, architecture, urban design, and environmental policy. She received her master's degree from the University of Oxford and her doctorate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the social, cultural, and political aspects of urban landscapes. Kinder is the author of three books. Her most recent book, The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), explores how activists use spatial agency for organizing. Her previous book, DIY Detroit: Making Do in a City without Services (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), explores how residents in Detroit cope with market disinvestment and government contraction by taking charge of abandoned landscapes. Kinder's first book, The Politics of Urban Water: Changing Waterscapes in Amsterdam (University of Georgia Press, 2015), explores how active residents in Amsterdam deploy waterscapes when rallying for political reform. Kinder is currently working on a book about the cultural geography of invisible exile. https://taubmancollege.umich.edu/faculty/directory/kimberley-kinder | |
Petra Kuppers | Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a disability culture activist, a writer, and a community performance artist. Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods, and uses ecosomatics, performance, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. Her third poetry collection, Gut Botany, was named one of the top ten US poetry books of 2020 by the New York Public Library, and won the 2021/22 Creative Book Award by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Petra is Artistic Director of The Olimpias, an international disability culture collective, and she co-creates Turtle Disco, a somatic writing studio. She is the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. | |
Allen Kurta | Dr. Allen Kurta received a B.S. and M.S. in Zoology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Biology from Boston University. His research for the past 45 years has focused on the ecology and behavior of bats, with an emphasis on two endangered species-the Indiana bat and the northern long- eared bat. He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals, and he has authored or edited several books, including Mammals of the Great Lakes Region, The Bats of Puerto Rico, and Bats of Michigan, with Bats of the West Indies scheduled to be released late in 2023. Dr. Kurta is Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee on Mammals for the Endangered Species Program of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Vice President of the Midwest Bat Working Group, and former Chairman of the Board of Directors for the North American Society for Bat Research. He currently is a professor of biology at Eastern Michigan University. | |
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes | Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is an Ann Arbor-based Puerto Rican writer. He is author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) and of Escenas transcaribeñas: Ensayos sobre teatro, performance y cultura (Isla Negra Editores, 2018) and coeditor with Deborah R. Vargas and Nancy Raquel Mirabal of Keywords for Latina/o Studies (New York University Press, 2017). His book Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2021 as part of the Triangulations: Lesbian/Gay/Queer Theater/Drama/Performance series and received the 2021-2022 Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from CLAGS, the Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York. He has published two books of fiction: Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails (Bilingual Press, 2009) and Abolición del pato (Terranova, 2013). He is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the former director and core faculty member of the Latina/o Studies Program. He is also Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Women's and Gender Studies. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he received his AB from Harvard (1991) and his MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia (1999). He has coedited queer issues of CENTRO Journal, Sargasso, and Hostos Review/Revista Hostosiana and has published two books of fiction, Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails and Abolición del pato. Larry performs in drag as Lola von Miramar since 2010, and has appeared in several episodes of the YouTube series Cooking with Drag Queens. | |
Katherine Larson | Katherine Larson illustrated the covers for the Ann Arbor Observer for 22 years and her book “Ann Arbor Observed, the stories behind the Ann Arbor Observer Covers” tells her unique story. Katherine is also a classical singer and muralist who is known to many from her solo guest appearances with the Ann Arbor Symphony and UMS. She is an accomplished fine artist as well as an illustrator and has made her living as an artist from her youth. Her book about Ann Arbor is unique in that it reveals her painting techniques as well as what was happening in her life at the time of each painting. It gives the reader an inside look at life in Ann Arbor from the perspective of an artist and singer. The book is a large, hardbound “coffee table” size which showcases each cover illustration in a large format. Subjects include the University of Michigan, local events, neighborhoods and downtown landmarks. It makes a great gift for anyone who loves Ann Arbor. |  |
Margaret A. Leary | I became intensely curious about "Who was William W. Cook?" when I joined the faculty at the University of Michigan Law School in 1973, after growing up in Oberlin, OH, and earning a B.A. (Cornell University), M.A. University of Minnesota), and J.D. (William Mitchell College of Law). My job in the Law Library provided an office in the magnificent Law Quadrangle, five buildings all given to Michigan by Cook. But no one knew who Cook was, where he worked, how he earned a fortune, and why he had given so much to the Michigan Law School. I was able to answer those questions only near the end of my career, when I spent six years researching Cook's life. In addition to being Director of the Law Library, I served on the City Zoning Board of Appeals and then Planning Commission; was elected to three terms on the Ann Arbor District Library Board, and was active in Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley, as well as professional library associations. https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/margaret-leary | |
Paul Leighton | Paul Leighton is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology at Eastern Michigan University. His interest is in how inequalities in society impact criminal justice, and how biases in criminal justice recreate social inequalities. He is a co-author of the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. Leighton is also a co-author of Class, Race, Gender & Crime. He co-authored one of the first books about private prisons, Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business and the Incarceration Binge (Rowman & Littlefield 2010). Leighton has been an editor of Critical Criminology: An International Journal, and has delivered many invited keynote addresses in the U.S., Canada and Norway. He regularly teaches classes on white collar crime, domestic violence, crime and technology, and marijuana decriminalization. Leighton is a past President of the Board of the local domestic violence shelter and currently heads the advisory board of the food pantry serving the university. | |
Cynthia Leitich Smith | Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee citizen) is a NYT bestselling author and was named the 2021 NSK Neustadt Laureate. Her novel HEARTS UNBROKEN won an American Indian Youth Literature Award, and her recent books include ANCESTOR APPROVED: INTERTRIBAL STORIES FOR KIDS, an ALA Notable Book and winner of the Reading of the West Book Award for Young Readers as well as SISTERS OF THE NEVERSEA, which received six starred reviews and made numerous “best of the year” lists. Her debut tween novel RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME was named one of the 30 Most Influential Children’s Books of All Time by Book Riot. Her 2023 release is the YA novel HARVEST HOUSE. Cynthia is the author-curator of Heartdrum, an imprint of HarperChildren’s and was the inaugural Katherine Paterson Chair at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program. |  |
Jessica Litman | Professor Jessica Litman, the John F. Nickoll Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, is the author of Digital Copyright and the co-author, with Jane Ginsburg and Mary Lou Kevlin, of the casebook Trademarks and Unfair Competition Law: Cases and Materials. Before rejoining the Michigan faculty in 2006, Litman was a professor of law at Wayne State University in Detroit, a visiting professor at New York University School of Law and at American University Washington College of Law, as well as a professor at Michigan Law from 1984 to 1990. In addition, she has taught copyright law at the University of Tokyo as part of the Law Faculty Exchange Program. Litman is an adviser for the American Law Institute's Restatement of Copyright, a past trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA, a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Intellectual Property, and a past member of the Future of Music Coalition's advisory council and the advisory board for Public Knowledge. https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/jessica-litman | |
Brian Love | Brian Love and Mike Burns, co-authors of Corked, both have day jobs as academics at the University of Michigan, Brian in Engineering and Mike in Medicine. They wanted to consider how different it would be to write short form content than what constitutes normal communication as part of their day jobs as Professor and Clinician. Brian had saved up a lot of stories that formed the backbone of the content, and it was a matter of doing the analytics dive to resolve what actually mattered in linking with the stories. Hence Corked. Brian has been at Michigan since 2008, and worked at Virginia Tech in Engineering from 1993 prior till his arrival in Ann Arbor. Brian is seen around town getting coffee, engaging with his kids sports which included diving and baseball, and occasionally playing tennis when not afflicted by arthritis. | |
Michael MacBride | Originally from Saline, Michael MacBride now calls Minnesota home but continues to write books set in and around Ann Arbor. Michael received his PhD in 19th century American and 18th century British Literature, and taught for a while, but has also held a number of odd jobs. He has delivered newspapers, worked for UPS, delivered pizzas, done collections at a bank, was a roadie for a country band, was a grant-writer and founder-researcher for non-profits, taught English, Literature, and Humanities courses at universities and colleges in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Illinois, and held a few other jobs in between. Regardless of what he was doing and when, the two consistent things in his life have been: writing and his intense curiosity. Michael has written academic books about pedagogy and cultural studies, non-fiction about LGBTIA+ history, contemporary "book club" fiction, speculative/science fiction, and a series of mid-grade interactive detective books. | |
Ken MacGregor | When I was a kid, I wanted more than anything to be an actor. To tread the boards onstage, wowing audience members with my ability to slip seamlessly into a character. For a while, I realized that dream. I even had an agent, in St. Louis, Missouri, who got me some TV gigs, including an appearance on the Discovery Channel. All that time, though, I was also writing stuff. And, it crawled further toward the front of my brain. I wrote and performed sketch comedy for about five years, in St. Louis, and when I moved back to Michigan. I wrote a zombie movie (which we made. It’s called “The Quirk and the Dead” and it’s on YouTube. Go watch it. It’s only 16 minutes. I can wait…Pretty good, huh? Thanks. So, eventually, the guy I was making movies with (Hi, Brian!) told me to stop sending him script after script after script and to turn them into short stories. Thank goodness he did, because it turns out I love doing this! | |
Kenneth MacLean | Kenneth J. MacLean is a freelance editor and writer who is interested in spirituality, politics, and geometry. He is the author of 11 books, including a math/geometry textbook on 3-dimensional geometric figures called polyhedra. Ken has learned that the common denominator of all human beings is a divine presence that transcends cultural and religious backgrounds. This understanding is reflected in all of his work. | |
Sarah Magee | Sarah Magee is an inveterate traveler, unabashed globalist, and firm believer in always eating dessert first. It is never too early for ice cream. She is a master packer of suitcases and lifelong Michigander. I Never Said I Love You is her literary debut. |  |
Patricia Majher | Patricia Majher is a museum professional and an author of three books on Michigan history as well as a tour guide focused on her adopted hometown, Ann Arbor. One of her history books -- Great Girls in Michigan History -- won a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2016. Majher is also a past editor of Michigan History magazine, and a graduate of Central Michigan University (BA journalism) and Eastern Michigan University (MS historic preservation, emphasis on museum studies). She operates a museum consulting business called Majher Museum Marketing. | |
Jim Mangi | After somewhat accidentally volunteering for, and serving in, Vietnam, Jim Mangi got a PhD in ecology and spent 40 years in consulting, predicting the effects of things like power plants, dams, pipelines, and military equipment. He wrote over 100 public reports, earning praise for their clarity to the public audience. Jim sold his company to care for his wife, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and as a form of respite from caregiving, began writing alternate histories. One of his books rigorously and credibly explores the “What If” of getting the atomic bomb somewhat sooner, and the other later than we actually did. In both books, our modern world, from the geopolitics of Europe, and of East Asia, to US presidential politics, to the space race, to the economy of Michigan, turn out rather differently from what we have today, and from each other. Jim lives in Saline where he continues caregiving for his wife. He volunteers with the Alzheimer’s Association teaching classes on dementia and caregiving, and he chairs Dementia Friendly Saline, educating communities on how to make life less difficult and more dignified for friends and neighbors living with dementia. He has dedicated both books to his wife, “who has cheerfully lived in an alternative reality for years”, and the dedications further commits that all of Jim’s proceeds go to the Alzheimer’s Association. Saline’s Fine Print bookshop carries both titles: Dropping the Atomic Bomb—on Hirohito and Hitler and The First Atomic Bomb-An Alternate History. | |
Andrei Markovits | Andrei Markovits is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies and teaches in the Department of Political Science, the Department of Sociology, and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He was born in the West Romanian city of Timisoara where he grew up as the only son in a tri-lingual (Hungarian, Romanian, German) middle class Jewish family ravaged by the Holocaust. He completed his secondary education in Vienna, Austria before embarking on his post-secondary studies at Columbia University where he spent nine years receiving five degrees in the process. He then became an associate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University of which he was a member for nearly 25 years while holding professorships at Wesleyan University, Boston University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1999 where he has been ever since. His more than 20 edited and authored books have been translated into many languages (German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Korean among others). The topics of his books range from European anti-Americanism to women's soccer; from sports to dog rescue. They have been published by the finest university presses from Princeton University Press to Cornell University Press; from the University of Michigan Press to Cambridge University Press. His memoir entitled THE PASSPORT AS HOME: COMFORT IN ROOTLESSNESS published by the Central European University Press in Budapest and Vienna in 2021. The book has also appeared in a German translation and will be published in Romanian. | |
Marianne K. Martin | Marianne K. Martin is one of the best-selling lesbian romance authors in the history of the genre, and her books have gained a wide international readership. She is the author of eleven novels. Her highly successful novels include the Lambda Literary Award finalists Tangled Roots, Under the Witness Tree, Mirrors, and For Now, For Always. In 2012, she was honored with the Trailblazer Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society and in 2013 she was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame. Marianne is also one of the founding partners of Bywater Books. Her responsibilities include managing general operations, as well as the Bywater Prize for Fiction, and working with Bywater’s new writers. | |
Shari Maser | Shari Maser Piracha is the author of the non-fiction book Blessingways: A Guide to Mother centered Baby Showers-Celebrating Pregnancy, Birth, and Motherhood. She wrote this “how-they” book for women when she was a childbirth educator who was also pregnant herself. Later as the homeschooling mother of two bookworms, she started writing children's stories. Her fiction story The Memory Tree was published in baby bug magazine, and she hopes to publish a picture book someday too. Now that Shari’s children are grown, she serves as an independent educational consultant and founder of YouQuest College Advising, as well as part of the student services team at Washtenaw Community College. When she is not busy supporting students, she enjoys playing Scrabble and ping pong, reading lots of books, walking with dogs or other humans in all kinds of Michigan weather, and traveling the world. |  |
JP McAndrew | I studied media and writing at EMU, focusing on screenwriting. “Venus in Twilight” is my first. I live in corn country south of Ann Arbor with wife Kimberly, two rescue dogs, and an orange cat, also a rescue. |  |
Kelly Murdoch-Kitt | Kelly Murdoch-Kitt is an Associate Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. She is a user experience designer and educator focused on people, systems, and interpersonal interactions. In her work and teaching, human connection drives the creation of effective and socially responsible concepts. She integrates visual communication, user experience, and service design with behavior change and social engagement, drawing on her industry experience as a user experience strategist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to joining U-M, Murdoch-Kitt served as an Assistant Professor in the School of Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She also taught in the Graphic Design Programs at the University of San Francisco and California College of the Arts. Her excellence in teaching and contributions to service within the discipline have been recognized by the Design Incubation Communication Design Educator Awards: Intercultural Design Collaborations in Sustainability; and the Decipher 2018 Design Educators Research Conference. Murdoch-Kitt and her research partner, Dr. Denielle J. Emans of Roger Williams University are co-authors of Intercultural Collaboration by Design: Drawing from Differences, Distances, and Disciplines through Visual Thinking (Routledge 2020). Based on their research, the book offers more than 30 visual thinking activities to support effective collaboration among diverse teams. Their research group, ORBIT Labs (Online Resource for Building Intercultural Teams), was recently recognized as a recipient of the 2022 Carol Hollenshead Inspire Award for Excellence in Promoting Equity and Social Change. Murdoch-Kitt and Emans are currently working together on a new book about the intersection of creative practice and psychological resilience, which argues that everyone can learn to become creatively resilient—and put methods of adaptability, flexibility, and optimism into practice. Its 15 case studies include various projects, practices, and activities that show readers how to utilize creative methods to work positively with uncertainty. |  |
Davi Napoleon | Davi Napoleon is a theater historian and freelance writer whose work appears in newspapers and magazines locally and nationally. Regulars include Live Design and American Theatre Magazine, and locally The Ann Arbor Observer, PULP, and an assortment of University of Michigan publications. She holds a BA and MA from Michigan and a Ph.D. in theater history, theory, and criticism from New York University. Her book, Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater, tells the onstage and backstage story of a theater that thrived in the mid-20th century and folded when funding for the arts decreased radically, even though the theater was drawing critical acclaim and loyal audiences. It reflects the larger story of the not-for-profit theater in America. |  |
Bethany Neal | Bethany Neal is the author of the internationally published young adult novel My Last Kiss (FSG Books for Young Readers/Macmillan). When she's not writing, she is part of the editorial team at Cherry Lake Publishing and teaches writing workshops at the Ann Arbor District Library. | |
Heather Neff | Born in Akron, Ohio, Heather Neff's family moved to Detroit when she was in her teens. After graduating from Cass Technical High School, Heather earned a Bachelor's Degree in English with High Distinction at the University of Michigan. She went on to study French language and culture at the Sorbonne, University of Paris. Heather earned her Lizentiat and doctoral degree in English Language and Literature, Comparative Literature and French Linguistics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. She then spent two years in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, where she taught at the University of the Virgin Islands and St. Joseph High School. She joined the faculty in the Department of English at Eastern Michigan University in 1993, retiring as a Distinguished Professor in 2021. The author of eight novels, Heather's books cover topics such as female friendship, lost heritage, love, troubled cultural relationships between Africans and African Americans, addiction and recovery, modern-day human trafficking, and intimate partner violence and its effect on children. Her book Wisdom received a Fiction Honor Book Award from the American Library Association. Heather's poetry from her time in France is collected in The Paris Hours. | |
Sarah Nisbett | Sarah Nisbett is an artist, author and founder of Drawn On The Way. A former professional opera singer, she learned to draw by sketching strangers during her daily commute on the New York City subway. A totally self-taught artist, she has drawn over 5,000 strangers and turned her hobby of drawing “on the way” into a successful illustration career, Instagram account, blog and book. Sarah uses illustration to connect people to their self worth and sense of wonder and her Drawn On The Way project is dedicated to helping people find the extraordinary in the everyday and to see themselves and those around them as works of art. She is passionate about empowering people to discover and enjoy their own creativity. Her work has been shown internationally and she’s a sought after creative collaborator and live-event illustrator. “Drawn On The Way: A Guide to capturing the moment through live sketching” is her first book. Look for @drawnontheway on Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok. | |
Nancy Nishihira | Nancy Nishihira is an Asian-American artist of Ryukyuan descent. Her poetry is featured in the local anthology Love and Other Futures; Poetry from Untold Stories of Liberation & Love, a women of color poetry anthology of Black, Latinx, Arab, Indigenous, and Asian women in and around Washtenaw County Michigan. Nancy has been published as a writer and photographer in the inaugural issue of Shimanchu Nu Kwii and she exhibits her painting in local art shows. Nancy is a longtime musician and singer/songwriter. Her music can be found on multiple streaming sites including Bandcamp and Soundcloud. | |
Kathryn Orwig | Kathryn Orwig started out writing 400-page novels in her small hometown in Northern Michigan, and now divides her time between novels, short stories, poems, and screenplays. Her work was published in Confined Connections by Z Publishing House (2017) and in the anthology she founded with nine talented writer friends titled Bring Your Words: A Writer’s Community Anthology by Fifth Avenue Press (July 2021). Kathryn has won or placed highly in multiple screenwriting competitions including The Nicholl’s Fellowship, Page Awards, Roadmap Writer’s Shorts Grand Prize Winner, Roadmap’s Diversity Initiative July 2021 Winner, Austin Film Festival Second Rounder, The International Screenwriters Association Fast Track Fellowship Genre Winner, among others. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan and is the recipient of a Summer Hopwood Award. Besides writing, she enjoys spending hours researching ancestors and learning their languages such as Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Italian, and Swedish, among many more. |  |
Robert Pasick | Robert Pasick, Ph.D. is a prolific writer and featured speaker on the complexities of the human condition. Being a Harvard educated psychologist and a University of Michigan trained executive coach, he has helped hundreds of private sector and nonprofit leaders, educators, government officials, and healthcare professionals reach their optimal level of performance. He teaches at the University of Michigan, Ross School of Business and serves as a consultant to the University of Michigan football team. He served as an advisor to companies who lost employees in New York City after 9/11 and provided services to the President of Rwanda following that country’s period of Genocide. Dr. Pasick has written eight books, resulting in appearances on Oprah, The Today Show, and National Public Radio. Dr. Pasick’s books draw on his experience as a human being, a clinical and organizational psychologist, and an executive coach to help people find and express themselves. | |
Judy Patterson Wenzel | Judy Patterson Wenzel grew up in Rogers City, a small community in northern Michigan. After | |
Andre F. Peltier | Andre F. Peltier (he/him) is a Pushcart and Best of the Net Nominee and a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches writing and a wide variety of literature classes. He lives in Ypsilanti with his wife, children, dog and turtles. His poetry has recently appeared in various publications like CP Quarterly, Lavender and Lime Review, About Place, Novus Review, Fiery Scribe, and Fahmidan Journal, and most recently in Menacing Hedge, The Brazos Review, and Idle Ink. His debut poetry collection, Poplandia, is available from Alien Buddha. In his free time, he obsesses over soccer and comic books. |  |
Aaron Perzanowski | Aaron Perzanowski is the Thomas W. Lacchia Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School where he teaches and writes about the intersection of intellectual and personal property law. Much of his work explores the notion of ownership in the digital economy. His books include The End of Ownership, co-authored with Jason Schultz (MIT Press, 2016), and The Right to Repair (Cambridge University Press, 2022). His current book project addresses how shifting conceptions of ownership threaten to undermine the core functions of libraries. Professor Perzanowski also has written about the ways in which informal governance and social norms influence creative production in contexts ranging from the tattoo industry to the clowning community. Creativity Without Law, his 2017 book with Kate Darling (NYU Press), collected much of the growing body of scholarship exploring the interplay between IP and social norms. | |
Isaac Pickell | Isaac Pickell is native Ann Arborite, a biracial poet, and a PhD candidate in Detroit, where he teaches the writing of poetry and the reading of literature. Isaac received his MFA in Poetry from Miami University, where he served as the Poetry Editor of Oxford Magazine, and he is the founding Editor-in-Chief of The Woodward Review. Isaac is the author of everything saved will be last (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) and the collection It’s not over once you figure it out (Black Ocean, 2023). You can find his recent work in Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Passages North, Poetry Daily, and various corners of the internet. Isaac has taken a seat in all fifty states and has so much to look forward to. |  |
Deb Pilutti | Deb Pilutti writes and illustrates books for children with humor and candor. She feels lucky to have a job where reading, playing with toys, and watching cartoons is considered “research.” Before becoming an author & illustrator, Deb was a graphic designer and created toys and packaging for Oliebollen.com as well as graphics for SeaWorld and Warner Brothers theme parks. Deb lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband, Tom, and Australian Shepard, Tater. She enjoys hiking, camping, reading and hanging out with friends and family. | |
Theo Poling | Theo Poling is a transgender author who uses they/them or he/his pronouns. They graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in creative writing and art and specialize in LGBT issues in their writing. They aim to increase representation in fiction. Theo has been published in numerous literary magazines and has had short films produced. They enjoy writing, participating in LGBT activism, and hiking in local nature preserves. Theo is a self-described cat person and breakfast food enthusiast. | |
Eileen Pollack | Eileen Pollack is the author of several novels and award winning story collections. Of which, Breaking and Entering was named a New York Times Editor's Choice selection. Eileen's work of creative nonfiction Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull was made into a movie starring Jessica Chastain. Her investigative memoir The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club was published in 2015; a long excerpt appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine and went viral. Her works have been selected for Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. Eileen lived in Ann Arbor for 27 years and directed the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. She now lives and writes in Boston but many of her books, stories, and essays are set in Michigan/Ann Arbor. | |
David Pratt | David Pratt is the author of Bob the Book (Chelsea Station), Wallaconia (Beautiful Dreamer Press), Todd Sweeney, the Fiend of Fleet High (Hosta Press), Looking After Joey (Lethe Press), and a story collection, My Movie (Chelsea Station). His stories have appeared in several periodicals and anthologies. David has performed work for the theater at venues in New York City and Michigan. He recently published Two Plays: The Snow Queen and November Door, and The Book of Humiliation, an "anti-novel" published as a series of zines designed by Ann Arbor, MI artist Nicholas Williams. | |
Stephanie D. Preston | Stephanie D. Preston is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. She has a master’s degree and a PhD in behavioral neuroscience from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied the neurobiology and behavior of decisions in food-storing animals. Subsequently, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine to study how the brain supports emotion-based decisions in humans. Stephanie’s research is interdisciplinary in focus and methods to address how the brain evolved to support complex behavior at the intersection of emotion and decision making. One focus is on empathy and altruism, particularly how others' states impact our own and motivate helping. Another focus is on decisions about resources, such as food, money, material goods, and charitable gifts, to address issues surrounding consumerism, hoarding, and pro-environmental behavior. She is currently fusing her lines of research to determine how best to promote altruism and charitable giving across racial and political divides and for other species and the natural environment, including collaborations with corporations and non-profit organizations. |  |
Lauren Ranalli | Lauren Ranalli is an award-winning children's book author and marketing coach for aspiring and self-published authors. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Lauren describes herself as "a fully-grown adult who still gets excited about the Scholastic book catalog. I can wander for hours in bookstores. I absolutely love a freshly sharpened pencil. And I have found so much joy in pursuing my dream of being a children’s book author. Inspired by my own high-spirited children, I aim to create stories that excite curiosity and broaden our sense of community." Lauren's current work includes "The Great Latke Cook Off," "Places We Have Never Been," "Let's Meet on the Moon," and "Snow Day at the Zoo." You can order books, download free activity sheets, or sign up for her author services on her website, and follow her journey on instagram: @lauren.ranalli_author. | |
Kamron Reynolds | Kamron Reynolds, of Kam Komics, is your friendly neighborhood comic book artist and rapper. As Kam says, “I JUST WANT TO HELP CREATE DIVERSE NEW CHARACTERS AND STORIES THAT CAN STAND THE TEST OF TIME, LIKE SO MANY ICONIC CHARACTERS FANS HAVE BEEN IN LOVE WITH FOR OVER A CENTURY. THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IS CHANGING EVERYDAY. AS MUCH AS I LOVE SPIDER-MAN, BATMAN, SUPERMAN, X-MEN, THE FANTASTIC FOUR INCREDIBLE HULK, ETC. THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE IN THIS NEW ERA OF COMICS. WE NEED MORE DIVERSE CHARACTERS WITH DEPTH. IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT HAVING BLACK/WHITE CHARACTERS ANYMORE. WE NEED MORE CHARACTERS THAT ARE HISPANIC, ASIAN, INDONESIAN, GAY, STRAIGHT, MALE, FEMALE, TRANS-GENDER, DISABLED, KIDS, TEENAGERS, ADULTS, SENIOR CITIZENS, ETC. AND THE ONLY WAY TO GET THIS TYPE OF DIVERSITY IS TO ENCOURAGE DIVERSE CREATORS AND ARTISTS. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE COMICS NOW. AND WE AS CREATORS AND ARTISTS HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO DIG DEEPER TO CREATE NEW ART AND LITERATURE. JUST LIKE ANYTHING IT TAKES TIME. AND I JUST HOPE MY WORK REACHES THE MOST DIVERSE COMMUNITY THAT IT CAN.” | |
Scott Rick | Scott Rick is a marketing professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, where he has won awards for research and teaching. He holds a PhD in Behavioral Decision Research from Carnegie Mellon, where he was a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow. His research on consumer behavior has been covered in outlets such as NPR, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has published in premier journals spanning marketing, psychology, and economics. His first book, Tightwads and Spendthrifts: Navigating the Money Minefield in Real Relationships, was published in January 2024 by St. Martin’s Press. |  |
Sandee Rodriguez | Sandee Rodriguez lives in Ypsilanti Michigan. She started writing at 19 years old with a poem about a French Fry. While continuing to pursue poetry, she responded to an ad about learning to write children's books and began writing short stories. At the age of 24, she sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury, amnesia, and paralysis, among other challenges. One of those challenges was language. Exploring writing, through Speech Therapy, she returned to poetry, children's stories and eventually journalism. Sandee spends her days baking, caring for her 3 dogs, and continuing to write early reader books. She’s also working on a full-length musical about her journey living with Traumatic Brain Injury. | |
Dan Romanchik | Dan Romanchik has been an Ann Arbor resident for more than 35 years and an amateur radio | |
Polly Rosenwaike | Polly Rosenwaike’s story collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You, was published by Doubleday, and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Best Short Story Collections of 2019” and Glamour’s “Best Books of 2019.” Her fiction and book reviews have appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, Glimmer Train, the New York Times Book Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in Ann Arbor, where she works as a freelance editor and serves as Fiction Editor for Michigan Quarterly Review. |  |
Rachel Rothschild | Rachel Emma Rothschild is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Previously a legal fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity, she holds a J.D., cum laude, from NYU School of Law, where she was a Furman Academic Scholar, and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She earned her B.A., magna cum laude, from Princeton University. From 2015 to 2017, she was an assistant professor and faculty fellow at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Rachel's scholarship sits at the intersection of law, history, and policy. She is the author of Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution (University of Chicago Press, 2019), and has written numerous articles and essays on pollution problems for academic journals and media outlets. Her recent research examines climate change litigation as well as the past and present regulation of toxic substances. https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/rachel-rothschild |  |
Jonathan Rowe | Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Jonathan Rowe has won two Avery Hopwood writing awards at the University of Michigan, the Marion Kirkwood Best Brief award at Stanford Law School, and the Thomas Cooley Prize for Best Brief in the Michigan Supreme Court. After law school, Jonathan worked five years as a Trial Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecuting police brutality and racial violence cases; ten years as a Senior Partner at Dykema Gossett PLLC in Michigan, specializing in media defense litigation; and ten years as a Partner in Soble Rowe Krichbaum LLP in Ann Arbor, broadening his practice to include plaintiff-side securities class action and tobacco litigation, and serving as a private mediator and arbitrator. In 2006 Jonathan Rowe retired from law practice to write novels full-time. He is the author of The Writing on the Wall (2003), A Question of Identity (2005), and The River of Strange People (2010). Jonathan and his wife, Susan Kessler, lived in Hawaii for 11 years, but recently returned to Ann Arbor, to be closer to their two children and grandchildren. | |
Anne Ruggles Gere | Anne Ruggles Gere is a professor of English and a professor of education at the University of Michigan. A high school English teacher before she took her PhD and became an academic, she has always been interested in writing. Questions that interest her include how people use different processes of writing to reach various goals, the kinds of learning that writing can enable, and how writers develop as they move from high school to college. Her most recent book, Developing Writers in HIgher Education: A Longitudinal Study, was a collaborative project based on surveys, samples of writing, and interviews with 169 undergraduates as they progressed from entering first-years to graduating seniors learning to identify necessary information for specific audiences and synthesizing feedback for stronger writing. |  |
Stephen Rush | Stephen Rush has enjoyed premieres in five continents and released many publications of his musical compositions. He has written 5 operas, chamber, electronic works, concertos, and symphonies, performed by the Detroit Symphony and Warsaw National Symphonies. He has written books, including a book on liturgy, a work with Ornette Coleman, and anti-racist and gender inclusive Music Theory. His recordings appear on ESP Disk', Innova, Equilibrium, Deep Listening, Centaur, MMC, RogueArts (Paris), Summit and CALA Records. As a Professor of Music at University of Michigan, he founded the Digital Music Ensemble, who worked with Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, and premiered works by John Cage, Philip Glass and La Monte Young. Rush has over 35 CDs released, and has performed or recorded with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Eliott Sharp, Steve Swell, Eugene Chadbourne, Peter Kowald and his jazz trio "Naked Dance" (Jeremy Edwards and Andrew Bishop). He is also deeply invested in Installation Art, collaborating with Michael Gould and Nobel Prize winning physicist Henry Pollack, and physicists at the Fermi Lab. | |
Roy Sexton | Roy Sexton leads Clark Hill’s marketing, branding, and communications efforts in collaboration with the firm’s exceptional team of marketing and business development professionals. He has nearly 20 years of experience in marketing, communications, business development, and strategic planning. Roy also advises attorneys on marketing and business development strategy. He has been heavily involved regionally and nationally in the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) as a board member, content expert, and presenter. Roy posts movie musings on Facebook, much to the chagrin of true arbiters of taste. He tends to go see whatever film has been most obnoxiously hyped, marketed, and oversold in any given week…art films? Bah! Won’t find too many of those discussed here. Roy is a published author of two books: Reel Roy Reviews, Volumes 1 and 2. | |
Grace Shackman | Grace Shackman is an Ann Arbor writer who has published four books on local history as well as many local history articles for the Ann Arbor Observer and other local publications. Her books include Ann Arbor Observed, published by the University of Michigan Press, 2006, Ann Arbor in the 19th Century, Ann Arbor in the 20th Century, both published by Arcadia Publishing, 2001 and 2002, and Webster: A Time, A Place, A People, published by the Webster United Church of Christ and the Webster Township Historical Society, 2007. Her Ann Arbor Observer articles can be accessed on the Ann Arbor District Library's web page under "Local History." She also worked as a reporter for the Chelsea Standard for three years. Shackman received a B.A.in history from the University of Michigan and a M. A. in history at Eastern Michigan University. In addition to writing, she has taught local history at Washtenaw Community College in their Community Enrichment Program and at the Adult Learners Institute located in Chelsea. She was elected and served as a Washtenaw County Commissioner, 1986-1994. She is at present on the board of A2Modern, a group researching and championing local mid-century architecture. | |
Nancy Shaw | Ann Arbor author Nancy Shaw got the idea for her best-selling picture book Sheep in a Jeep while stuck in the back seat on a family car trip. Seven more sheep books have followed. She also wrote Raccoon Tune (a Michigan Reads! book) and Elena's Story. She's received School Library Journal and Parents magazine Best Books of the Year citations, and the Reading Magic Award, among other honors. A Hopwood Award winner, she holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Harvard University. | |
Stacie Sheldon | Aanii / Boozhoo / Hello! My name is Stacie Sheldon. Chitwaadewegekwe nindizhinikaaz Anishinaabemong. Honor Beat Woman is my name in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe). Ajiijaak n'doodem. I am Crane Clan. I combine my rich work life as a UX practitioner with the passion I have for life as an Ojibwe person and language advocate. I am an author, and co-founder of http://www.ojibwe.net, where I lead technical development. I have served on the Board of Directors for American Indian Services in Lincoln Park, Michigan. Now a resident of Ann Arbor, MI, I grew up in the lakes and hills of Northern Michigan where I spent my summers swimming in our “great lakes” and winters exploring the woods. A lifelong runner, I can also be found on hikes with my dog, Nimkii, or playing guitar, piano, or singing. I’m a bookworm at heart, and I occasionally stay up way too late reading mystery novels--most recently, I’ve been unable to put down the Virgil Flowers series by John Sanford. |  |
Emily Siwek | Emily Siwek lives in Ann Arbor, MI and loves finding adventure in her hometown with her husband and two children. She has worked in a variety of creative industries from interior design to trend forecasting and enjoys coloring outside the lines. | |
Patti Smith | Ann Arbor townie Patti Smith is a former legal aid lawyer and current special education teacher. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Adrian College with highest honors in 1994, a Doctor of Law from University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Law in 1996, and a Master's Degree with Highest Honors from Eastern Michigan University in 2012. She is the author of four history books: Images of America--Downtown Ann Arbor, A History of the People's Food Co-op Ann Arbor, Vanishing Ann Arbor, and Michigan Beer: A Heady History. She has written for Concentrate, Mittenbrew, The Ann, AADL's Pulp blog, and the Ann Arbor Observer. Patti serves as a commissioner for the Recreation Advisory Commission, as a storyteller in the Ann Arbor Storytellers' Guild, and as a volunteer DJ for WCBN. Patti is a frequent public speaker around town, curating HERsay (an all-woman variety show), GROWN FOLKS READING (storytime for grownups), MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT? (all-lawyer show) and telling stories at Ignite, Nerd Nite, Tellabration and Telling Tales Out of School. She lives with her husband, Ken Anderson, and dog Pugsley Anderson-Smith, in the Village--truly vintage living in her favorite city on earth. | |
Sondra Soderborg | I am a children's book writer. I have had many careers, including lawyer, teacher, and stay-at-home parent. All of that work has shaped and informed what I bring to writing. But finally finding the teachers and colleagues who helped me learn to write fiction has been a great joy in my life. I came to Ann Arbor from Salt Lake City in 1986 to attend the University of Michigan Law School. My husband and I were lucky enough to stay and raise our three great kids here. Erin Murphy of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency represents me. My debut novel, Sky Ropes, is published by Chronicle Books. |  |
Leslie Stainton | Leslie Stainton is the author of two nonfiction books, Lorca: A Dream of Life and Staging Ground: An American Theater and Its Ghosts. Her writing has appeared in The Sun, The American Scholar, River Teeth, The Southern Humanities Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. Her next book is about her slaveholding ancestors, the Scarletts of Georgia. | |
Barbara Stark-Nemon | Barbara Stark-Nemon, has written the award-winning novels Even in Darkness and Hard Cider. Her current work in progress is a 17h century European coming of age refugee story. Barbara has degrees from the University of Michigan in English, Art History and Communication Disorders. She writes novels, essays and short stories, and speaks at conferences, literary events, libraries and book clubs. She lives, writes, swims, cycles, gardens and does fiber art in Ann Arbor and Northport, MI. | |
Peter G. Stipe | Peter G. Stipe was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He retired from the Ann Arbor Police Department in 2004 as its most highly decorated officer. His assignments included the Special Tactics Unit, Detective Division, Field Training Officer and District Coordinator. A writer and Film Noir buff, he is the Author of “Badge 112”, a memoir. He resides in Michigan’s Irish Hills. | |
Ellen Stone | Ellen Stone grew up on the north branch of the Susquehanna River in the Appalachian Mountains of rural Pennsylvania. She advises a poetry club at Community High School and co-hosts a monthly poetry series in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ellen’s poems have appeared recently in Anti-Heroin Chic, Great Lakes Review, Rust + Moth and River Mouth Review among other places. She is the author of What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020) and The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Ellen’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net. | |
Alison Swan | Alison Swan’s fifth book, A Fine Canopy, was released by Wayne State University Press in 2020 and recommended by Orion magazine, LitHub, and Publisher’s Weekly, among others. Ann Arbor-based Alice Greene & Company published her poetry chapbooks Before the Snow Moon—a fine-art collaboration with artists Jean Buescher Bartlett (of Ann Arbor) and Melanie Boyle (formerly of Ann Arbor)—and Dog Heart (Alice Greene), also a collaboration with Bartlett and Boyle. Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes (Michigan State University Press), Alison Swan’s brain child and labor of love, is a 2007 Library of Michigan Notable Book. She is co-author of The Saugatuck Dunes: Artists Respond to a Freshwater Landscape. Her poem Porch Swing (Bloodroot Press, 1997), an early collaboration with Bartlett, has been acquired by the New York Public Library and other rare book collections. Among her awards are a Mesa Refuge Residency and the Michigan Environmental Council’s Petoskey Prize for Environmental Leadership. Swan founded Eco Book Club at Ann Arbor’s Literati Bookstore in 2015 and has hosted it ever since. In the 1990s she directed promotions and events at Ann Arbor’s late Shaman Drum Bookshop (“Academic, scholarly, and independent, since 1983,” a tagline she penned). Also in the 1990s, she wrote a book column for Current magazine and author interviews and reviews for a weekly independent newspaper based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and earned her B.A. in English literature at Michigan State University. After stints on the east and west coasts of North America, she settled back in Michigan’s lower peninsula where, for many years, she taught literature and writing at Western Michigan University’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. She has been active in efforts to protect and preserve the Saugatuck Dunes on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan since 2001. | |
Ian Tadashi Moore | Ian Tadashi Moore is a father, designer, musician, and artist from southeast Michigan. He grew up talking to the bugs in the back lawn and plinking melodies on piano keys. He likes the sounds words make and will probably never act his age. He has written, illustrated, and recorded three books & audiobooks: Zōsan, Tamaishi, and Where All the Little Things Live. | |
Charles Taylor | Cleveland native Charles Taylor and his wife, university administrator and award- winning children's book author Debbie Taylor, have lived and worked in Ann Arbor, Michigan for more than thirty years. An avid golfer, music collector and film buff, Charles is a longtime lecturer in English at the University of Michigan. He is author of the San Francisco-based thriller Dark Rhythm and the detective novel Watching, which is set in Southeast Michigan. | |
Keith Taylor | Keith Taylor was born in British Columbia in 1952. He spent his childhood in Alberta and his adolescence in Indiana. After several years of traveling, he moved to Michigan, where he earned his M.A. in English at Central Michigan University. He has worked as a camp-boy for a hunting outfitter in the Yukon, as a dishwasher in southern France, a housepainter in Indiana and Ireland, a freight handler, a teacher, a freelance writer, the co-host of a radio talk show, and as the night attendant at a pinball arcade in California. For more than twenty years he worked as a bookseller in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Then he taught in the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs at the University of Michigan, and directed the Bear River Writers Conference. From 2010–2018 he worked as the Poetry Editor at Michigan Quarterly Review. He retired from the University of Michigan in 2018. He lives with his wife in Ann Arbor; they have one daughter. | |
Bruce Tharp | Believed to be the first industrial designer to receive a PhD in anthropology (University of Chicago), in 1998 Bruce began researching the material culture of Indiana's Old Order Amish, focusing on the production & consumption of value. He first earned a BS in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University and a master’s degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute. In between his schooling, he served as a US Army nuclear weapons officer (Captain) in Germany. After researching the future of work and the workplace for Haworth Inc.'s design research think-tank, the Ideation Group, he began his teaching career. Over the last fifteen years he has been a tenured professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and currently at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. His and Stephanie's award-winning design studio has exhibited internationally, licensed designs for local and global companies, and self-produced commercial, experimental, and discursive products. |  |
Stephanie Tharp | Stephanie Tharp is an industrial designer and educator— currently an Associate Professor and an Undergraduate Program Co-Director at the University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art & Design. Her recent research surrounds the theory and practice of discursive design. One current project is a collaboration with chronic pain specialists exploring public engagement with medical research and challenging popular stigmas of pain sufferers. |  |
Jacinda Townsend | Jacinda Townsend is the author of the novels Mother Country and Saint Monkey, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. | |
Jennifer Traig | Jennifer Traig is the author of Act Natural, Well Enough Alone, and Devil in the Details and the editor of The Autobiographer's Handbook and Don't Forget to Write. She holds a PhD in English from Brandeis, and teaches in the Comprehensive Studies Program at UM. | |
Douglas Trevor | Douglas Trevor is the author of the short story collection The Book of Wonders (2017), the novel Girls I Know, which was the recipient of the 2013 Balcones Fiction Prize, and the short story collection The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space, which won the 2005 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 2006 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction. Doug's short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares Solos, The Iowa Review, The Notre Dame Review, The Minnesota Review, and New Letters. He has also had stories in The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Epoch, Black Warrior Review, The New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and more than a dozen other publications. His stories have been anthologized in— among other places-The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton, where he worked with Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison, and a PhD in Renaissance Literature from Harvard. His next novel is set in Denver and focuses on a father's addiction issues, as well as other secrets uncovered by his estranged son. | |
Angela Verges | Author, comedian, and edutainer Angela Verges was born in Detroit, MI. One of her favorite books as a youth was, Are you there God, it's me Margaret, by Judy Blume. In fact, she liked it so much that she wrote a book report on it in 6th grade and again in 8th grade. Shhh, don't tell her teachers. Angie began writing in 5th grade when she received her first diary. She continued keeping a journal through high school and college. Angie is a graduate of Michigan State University and currently working in the field of recreation. Writing has always been her passion and any time she can sprinkle it with humor, she does. Angela has two adult sons who quite often fill her humor bucket with their antics. Her book Menopause Ain't No Joke started as a collection of blog posts, which have also accompanied her on stage in comedy sets. Her words continue to scream onto the pages of journals, the back of envelopes, napkins or anything handy. Angie likes to write books for children and blog about parenting experiences as she practices being a grown up. | |
Kathleen Vincenz | Kathleen Vincenz is a children's book author who enjoys writing about family, faith, warmth, and humor. She is the founder of Squirrels at the Door Publishing, a children's publishing outlet for middle grade novels and educational online content. She lives on a hill by a lake with her husband and woodland friends. In her other work, she is a technical writer and explains how to use software to solve engineering problems. | |
Jennifer Vivekanand | When she’s not being defeated in board games by her family, Michigan-based author Jennifer Vivekanand likes to read, travel and make weird sandwiches. Jennifer has a B.F.A. from Kendall College of Art & Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, including certificates of summer studies at the Royal College of Art in London, England, and the Academy of Fine Arts Pietro Vannucci, in Perugia, Italy. Most recently, she spent a productive month working on her second novel while eating girl dinners and old-school sauna-ing as a Writer- in-Residence at The Arteles Creative Center in Haukijärvi, Finland. For a fun Michigan facts FAQ and to watch the book trailer of her Debut YA Thriller, Welcome To Nightjar, visit her author website www.stuffbyjenn.com | |
Marian Volkman | Marian Volkman grew up in a family of seekers and has always been interested in the possibilities of human potential and of inter-species communication. In addition to conducting training in Traumatic Incident Reduction and the educational system of Applied Metapsychology in many countries, she maintains a private practice working with individuals using these methods. After attending the University of Michigan for three years (it was the sixties), she dropped out to pursue a more eclectic education. Years of study and travel lead her to a meeting in the early 80's with Frank A Gerbode, M.D., the developer of Applied Metapsychology and they have worked together ever since. She is married to author and publisher Victor R. Volkman and has a daughter, Stephanie. They live in Ann Arbor Michigan with, yes, it's true, many cats. Marian contributed to the book Beyond Trauma: Conversations on Traumatic Incident Reduction, edited by Victor before completing her own book Life Skills, and her work of fiction, Turtle Dolphin Dreams. She has three more nonfiction books in the works and another work of fiction. | |
Jennifer Waddell | Jennifer Waddell writes devotionals about Christian living. She released her first book in 2018 but she’s been writing since high school. Jennifer is a songwriter and has been involved in music ministry for many years. Her goal of writing is to bring hope and encouragement to the readers. Her books are available at her church, Shekinah Christian church, and also on Amazon. | |
Erin Wakeland | Erin Wakeland is a multidisciplinary artist focused in social practice, painting, and fiber work. She often uses recycled materials and has retained the description “thrifty, scrappy, and imaginative.” Erin is currently renovating a house in Detroit. Her BFA thesis was published by Ann Arbor District Library and is available for purchase IRL or pursue online. |  |
Cody Walker | Cody Walker teaches English and directs the Undergraduate Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He’s the author of two full-length poetry collections: The Self-Styled No-Child (Waywiser, 2016) and Shuffle and Breakdown (Waywiser, 2008). He’s also the author of The Trumpiad, a 2017 chapbook that doubled as an ACLU fundraiser. His awards include the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry from Shenandoah, the Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize from Hunger Mountain, and residency fellowships from the University of Arizona Poetry Center, the Amy Clampitt Fund, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A longtime writer-in-residence in Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools program, he was elected Seattle Poet Populist in 2007. His work appears in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, The Yale Review, and The Best American Poetry (2015 and 2007). He’s the director of the Bear River Writers’ Conference and the co-editor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan, 2013). He lives in Ann Arbor with the fiction writer Polly Rosenwaike and their two daughters. | |
Frances Kai-Hwa Wang | Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a journalist, poet, artist, essayist, and activist focused on issues of Asian America, race, justice, and the arts. Her writing has appeared at PBS NewsHour, NBC AsianAmerica, The Emancipator, PRI GlobalNation, AngryAsianMan, Cha Asian Literary Journal, Kartika Review, and Drunken Boat. She teaches Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at University of Michigan and creative writing at Washtenaw Community College. She co-created multimedia artwork for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. She has written three chapbooks and a new book of poetry, “You Cannot Resist Me When My Hair Is in Braids,” at Wayne State University Press. |  |
Michelle Webster-Hein | Michelle Webster-Hein is a graduate of Vermont College’s MFA program and the author of the Michigan-based novel Out of Esau from Counterpoint Press. Her work has been recognized in the Best American series, nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and published in Lit Hub, Modern Farmer, River Teeth, and Hunger Mountain, among other places. She lives on a homestead in rural Michigan with her husband and children. |  |
Sarah Weeks | Sarah Weeks has written and published more than 60 books and novels for young readers including the best selling novels, Pie, Save Me a Seat, and So B. It, now a feature film. Her most recent title Soof, is the companion book to her novel So B. It. In addition to writing, Sarah has served as a faculty member in the prestigious Writing Program at the New School in New York City as well as at Columbia University's Teachers College under the auspices of Lucy Calkins. Each year Sarah visits, both virtually and in-person with thousands of students in grades k-8. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she now resides in Jeffersonville, NY. She has two grown sons, Gabriel and Nathanial and is married to Jim Fyfe, a high school history teacher and presentation coach. | |
Ari Weinzweig | Ari Weinzweig moved to Ann Arbor from his hometown of Chicago to attend the University of Michigan. After graduating, he went to work washing dishes in a local restaurant and soon discovered that he loved the food business. Ari and Paul Saginaw started Zingerman’s Delicatessen in 1982 with a bank loan, a staff of two, a small selection of specialty foods and a short sandwich menu. Since then, Ari and Paul have built Zingerman’s into an Ann Arbor institution with over 500,000 visitors every year and a staff of 500+. In April of 1995, Ari and Paul received the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County’s first Humanitarian Award for their community contributions. In 2007, the two were presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from Bon Appetit magazine for their work in the food industry. Ari has served on several boards including The Ark, and president of The American Cheese Society. He is a frequent guest speaker in business classes and food conferences from University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University to American Institute of Wine and Food. | |
Carey F. Whitepigeon | Carey F. Whitepigeon is a member of a Potawatomi tribe, one of the Three Fires of the Anishinaabe. A lifelong resident of the state of Michigan, she lives in Ann Arbor with her husband, three children, and two cats. She holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the University of Michigan. Carey’s career has included marketing, market research, business consulting, project management, and non-profit management. Her professional travels have given Carey the opportunity to meet and work with amazing people in countries around the world, for which she is grateful. As a reader and writer, Carey's first love has been science fiction and fantasy ever since she read Tolkien’s The Hobbit in second grade. In addition to reading, Carey enjoys travel, hiking, kayaking, and spending time with her family. | |
Claudia Whitsitt | Claudia Whitsitt began creating stories when she was very little, and once in the 5th grade, she spent hours recording them in longhand on looseleaf paper. When she wasn't writing, she was reading. Claudia grew up to be a teacher and mother, but after raising her children, went back to writing. She is proud to be an author of both children's and adult novels. In addition to writing the award-winning historical fiction Kids Like You Series, Claudia has also authored The Wrong Guy, loosely based on the Michigan Murders of the late sixties. She is the author of the Samantha Series as well, including Identity Issues, Intimacy Issues, Internal Issues, and Inherited Issues. Recently, she has released three books in her new Love and Loss Series, Black Ice, Lake Fog, and Lingering Clouds. This series is unique in that the characters in each book are different, and the series focuses on the themes of love and loss. | |
Heidi Woodward Sheffield | Heidi Woodward Sheffield's debut book Brick by Brick received the Ezra Jack Keats Award for Illustration and was chosen by the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. Her other books include Are Your Stars Like My Stars? (Sterling Publishing, written by Leslie Helakoski) and Ice Cream Face (Penguin), and Good Night, Little Man (HarperCollins, written by Daniel Bernstrom). Heidi has received numerous awards from The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and her artwork has been included in several exhibitions. Her graphic designs and illustrations for The Ann Arbor District Library have garnered awards from the American Library Association. Her vibrant collages feature unusual textures like cork, Mexican embroidery and Irish lace. On any given day, she can be seen taking photographs that inspire her stories and collages. In addition to creating children's books, Heidi enjoys speaking at conferences, libraries and schools. | |
Simone Yehuda | Simone Yehuda is a bilingual (French is her first language) screenwriter who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband, historian Barry Michael Shapiro. Simone’s father was a German Jewish Holocaust survivor escaping from Hitler who met her mother, a French Catholic whose own mother was a leader of the French Resistance. She began as a poet (2 books published: THAW and LIFTING WATER, and a third poetry collection, PIECES OF THUNDER). She has served as Founding Editor for ECLIPSE MAGAZINE and Poetry Editor at BRIDGES JOURNAL. Her BA is from Bennington College. As a graduate student at Columbia University, she played flute with a NY Symphony Orchestra and was a member of the Mass Transit Dance Company. She’s also a multi-produced playwright (including a mystery, WILLING, Off Broadway). She has served as Playwright in Residence at Detroit’s Attic Theater. She later earned a Master’s in Screenwriting at Screenwriting U and became a Top Tier Screenwriter at Roadmap Writers. Professor Emeritus at Siena Heights University, she’s now a full-time screenwriter. Some of her screenplays – JERUSALEM ROAD, THE NEW EVE, and LOVE AND HOMICIDE – focus on the reconciliation of opposites divided by cultural and identity barriers. | |
Thomas Zimmerman | Thomas Zimmerman is a poet, teacher, and editor. Tom teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Huron River Review, The Big Windows Review, and the WCC Poetry Club at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, MI. | |
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