| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. |  |
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. | |
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. | |
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. |  |
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. |  |
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. |  |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
