Meet your local authors!

Patricia Majher

Academic, Local Literature, Non-Fiction

Patricia Majher is a museum professional and an author of three books on Michigan history as well as a tour guide focused on her adopted hometown, Ann Arbor. One of her history books -- Great Girls in Michigan History -- won a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2016. Majher is also a past editor of Michigan History magazine, and a graduate of Central Michigan University (BA journalism) and Eastern Michigan University (MS historic preservation, emphasis on museum studies). She operates a museum consulting business called Majher Museum Marketing.

https://www.majhermktg.com/

Andrei Markovits

Academic, Non-Fiction

Andrei Markovits is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies and teaches in the Department of Political Science, the Department of Sociology, and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He was born in the West Romanian city of Timisoara where he grew up as the only son in a tri-lingual (Hungarian, Romanian, German) middle class Jewish family ravaged by the Holocaust. He completed his secondary education in Vienna, Austria before embarking on his post-secondary studies at Columbia University where he spent nine years receiving five degrees in the process. He then became an associate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University of which he was a member for nearly 25 years while holding professorships at Wesleyan University, Boston University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1999 where he has been ever since.

His more than 20 edited and authored books have been translated into many languages (German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Korean among others). The topics of his books range from European anti-Americanism to women's soccer; from sports to dog rescue. They have been published by the finest university presses from Princeton University Press to Cornell University Press; from the University of Michigan Press to Cambridge University Press. His memoir entitled THE PASSPORT AS HOME: COMFORT IN ROOTLESSNESS published by the Central European University Press in Budapest and Vienna in 2021. The book has also appeared in a German translation and will be published in Romanian.

https://andymarkovits.com/

Lindsay-Jean Hard

Cookbook

Lindsay-Jean Hard is the IACP award-nominated author of Cooking with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, and Stems into Delicious Meals (inspired by her Food52 column of the same name) and co-author of a Zingerman's Bakehouse cookbook (Fall 2023). She’s a copywriter at Zingerman’s Creative Services in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she shares her passion for great food, sustainability, and community.

https://www.lindsayjeanhard.com/

Patrick Flores-Scott

Young Adult

Patrick Flores-Scott was a long-time public school teacher in Seattle, Washington. He’s now a stay-at-home dad and early morning writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Patrick’s first novel, Jumped In, was named to the 2014 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults list, a Walden Award finalist, a Washington Book Award winner, an NCSS/CBC Notable Book for the Social Studies, and a Bank Street College Best Books of 2014. His second novel, American Road Trip, ​received multiple starred reviews and is a 2019 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick, and was nominated for state lists and awards in Texas, Arizona, Washington, Connecticut and Georgia.

http://patrickfloresscott.com/index.html

Ron Eglash

Academic, Non-Fiction

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Eglash