We have 170 local authors in our directory!
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| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Nancy Nishihira | Nancy Nishihira is an Asian-American artist of Ryukyuan descent. Her poetry is featured in the local anthology Love and Other Futures; Poetry from Untold Stories of Liberation & Love, a women of color poetry anthology of Black, Latinx, Arab, Indigenous, and Asian women in and around Washtenaw County Michigan. Nancy has been published as a writer and photographer in the inaugural issue of Shimanchu Nu Kwii and she exhibits her painting in local art shows. Nancy is a longtime musician and singer/songwriter. Her music can be found on multiple streaming sites including Bandcamp and Soundcloud. | |
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. | |
Linda Cotton Jeffries | My name is Linda Cotton Jeffries and I grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and for over thirty years, I taught special education in a variety of settings. I retired from teaching in 2016 and since then have gone from writing part time to writing full time. My first novels, We Thought We Knew You and Who We Might Be, were published by Fifth Avenue Press in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My novel Seeing in the Quiet was published October 1st 2021 by Sunbury Press. Strong women, suspense, and romance are the elements I most enjoy writing about! | |
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. | |
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. | |
Matthew L.M. Fletcher | Matthew L.M. Fletcher, ’97, is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at Michigan Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of federal Indian law, American Indian tribal law, Anishinaabe legal and political philosophy, constitutional law, federal courts, and legal ethics, and he sits as the Chief Justice of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. Professor Fletcher also sits as an appellate judge for the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians, the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska, and the Tulalip Tribes. He is a member of the Grand Traverse Band. | |
Jay Fiondella | Jay was born in a suburb of New Haven, Connecticut. He moved to Detroit in the early 1980s to pursue his dream of becoming a successful rock drummer. Thank God he became an electrician, or as he puts it, “My kids would have starved!” He has three children, Shane, Corin, and Victoria, who enjoy poking fun at their dad. He is also a proud grandfather of three beautiful young ladies who happen to love their Poppa Jay! He has continued his musical endeavors through the years and began entertaining thoughts of pursuing his love for prose, starting with his first book, But Dad, a personal narrative of fatherhood. In 2023, he retired, and he and his wife, Jenine, moved to Northern Michigan, where he continues to follow his passion for writing. Project Earth is his third self-published work and his first full-length science fiction novel. He enjoys beating the drums, now governed by his aching anatomy, and is currently working on a sequel to Project Earth. | |
Jennifer Burd | Jennifer Burd has had poetry published in numerous print and online journals. She is author of a full-length book of poems, Body and Echo (2010; PlainView Press), a chapbook of original poems set to music by Laszlo Slomovits, Receiving the Shore (2016, Little Light Publications), and a book of creative nonfiction, Daily Bread: A Portrait of Homeless Men & Women of Lenawee County, Michigan (Bottom Dog Press; 2009). Her newest collection of poetry, Days’ Late Blue, is scheduled to be published by Cherry Grove Editions in July 2017. She is co-author of a children's play based on Patricia Polacco's book I Can Hear the Sun, which was produced by Wild Swan Theatre of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2015. Burd received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in Seattle. She currently teaches writing and literature classes at Jackson College, Jackson, Michigan, and at Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, as well as creative writing classes online through The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. | |
David Jibson | Having grown up in rural Michigan, David Jibson now lives in Ann Arbor where he is the editor of Third Wednesday, an independent quarterly journal of literary and visual arts, a member of the Poetry Society of Michigan and a coordinator of The Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle. He retired from a long career in Social Work, most recently with a Hospice agency. His poetry has been published in dozens of journals both in print and online. David holds BA degrees in Social Work and Interdisciplinary Communications from Western Michigan University and an MSW from Michigan State University. | |
DC Armijo | A lifelong Michigan resident, DC Armijo is an accomplished executive with over 25 years of nonprofit leadership experience. He is married, has a college-aged daughter, and currently splits his time between Milford, Michigan and Naples, Florida. DC has a bachelor’s degree from Oakland University and a master’s in health services administration from the University of Michigan. After beginning his career in hospital administration, he transitioned to working for nonprofits focused on environmental and public health concerns. DC’s dedication to purpose-driven work is founded in a childhood marked by poverty and a father’s illness. Those early challenges gave him the lifelong gifts of resilience, empathy, and purpose. He believes the nonprofit sector has grown increasingly important because of declines in governmental effectiveness and floundering public policy. As a result, we need more nonprofit leaders who are driven and equipped to make a difference. DC’s book, The Nonprofit Dilemma explores why nonprofit management is so challenging. It is based on the simple idea that nonprofit leaders frequently encounter a choice between advancing their organization's impact or its financial health. Nearly every decision comes with the same underlying question—which aim to prioritize? |  |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
