We have 170 local authors in our directory!
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| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
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. |  |
Rick Coppens | Rick Coppens is a retired sales rep who lives on a small farm in southeastern Michigan with his wife, Kathy, a former Ann Arbor educator. He is a musician, songwriter, and storyteller whose free time includes traveling the country with Kathy and spending time with their five wonderful children and four beautiful grandkids. | |
Aaron Perzanowski | Aaron Perzanowski is the Thomas W. Lacchia Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School where he teaches and writes about the intersection of intellectual and personal property law. Much of his work explores the notion of ownership in the digital economy. His books include The End of Ownership, co-authored with Jason Schultz (MIT Press, 2016), and The Right to Repair (Cambridge University Press, 2022). His current book project addresses how shifting conceptions of ownership threaten to undermine the core functions of libraries. Professor Perzanowski also has written about the ways in which informal governance and social norms influence creative production in contexts ranging from the tattoo industry to the clowning community. Creativity Without Law, his 2017 book with Kate Darling (NYU Press), collected much of the growing body of scholarship exploring the interplay between IP and social norms. | |
Kenneth MacLean | Kenneth J. MacLean is a freelance editor and writer who is interested in spirituality, politics, and geometry. He is the author of 11 books, including a math/geometry textbook on 3-dimensional geometric figures called polyhedra. Ken has learned that the common denominator of all human beings is a divine presence that transcends cultural and religious backgrounds. This understanding is reflected in all of his work. | |
Lauren Ranalli | Lauren Ranalli is an award-winning children's book author and marketing coach for aspiring and self-published authors. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Lauren describes herself as "a fully-grown adult who still gets excited about the Scholastic book catalog. I can wander for hours in bookstores. I absolutely love a freshly sharpened pencil. And I have found so much joy in pursuing my dream of being a children’s book author. Inspired by my own high-spirited children, I aim to create stories that excite curiosity and broaden our sense of community." Lauren's current work includes "The Great Latke Cook Off," "Places We Have Never Been," "Let's Meet on the Moon," and "Snow Day at the Zoo." You can order books, download free activity sheets, or sign up for her author services on her website, and follow her journey on instagram: @lauren.ranalli_author. | |
Ian Tadashi Moore | Ian Tadashi Moore is a father, designer, musician, and artist from southeast Michigan. He grew up talking to the bugs in the back lawn and plinking melodies on piano keys. He likes the sounds words make and will probably never act his age. He has written, illustrated, and recorded three books & audiobooks: Zōsan, Tamaishi, and Where All the Little Things Live. | |
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. |  |
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. | |
Kathryn Orwig | Kathryn Orwig started out writing 400-page novels in her small hometown in Northern Michigan, and now divides her time between novels, short stories, poems, and screenplays. Her work was published in Confined Connections by Z Publishing House (2017) and in the anthology she founded with nine talented writer friends titled Bring Your Words: A Writer’s Community Anthology by Fifth Avenue Press (July 2021). Kathryn has won or placed highly in multiple screenwriting competitions including The Nicholl’s Fellowship, Page Awards, Roadmap Writer’s Shorts Grand Prize Winner, Roadmap’s Diversity Initiative July 2021 Winner, Austin Film Festival Second Rounder, The International Screenwriters Association Fast Track Fellowship Genre Winner, among others. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan and is the recipient of a Summer Hopwood Award. Besides writing, she enjoys spending hours researching ancestors and learning their languages such as Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Italian, and Swedish, among many more. |  |
Bruce Tharp | Believed to be the first industrial designer to receive a PhD in anthropology (University of Chicago), in 1998 Bruce began researching the material culture of Indiana's Old Order Amish, focusing on the production & consumption of value. He first earned a BS in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University and a master’s degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute. In between his schooling, he served as a US Army nuclear weapons officer (Captain) in Germany. After researching the future of work and the workplace for Haworth Inc.'s design research think-tank, the Ideation Group, he began his teaching career. Over the last fifteen years he has been a tenured professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and currently at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. His and Stephanie's award-winning design studio has exhibited internationally, licensed designs for local and global companies, and self-produced commercial, experimental, and discursive products. |  |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
