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