We have 168 local authors in our directory!
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| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
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. |  |
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. | |
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. |  |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. |  |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
