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