We have 170 local authors in our directory!
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| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. |  |
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 | |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
