| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Stephanie D. Preston | Stephanie D. Preston is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. She has a master’s degree and a PhD in behavioral neuroscience from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied the neurobiology and behavior of decisions in food-storing animals. Subsequently, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine to study how the brain supports emotion-based decisions in humans. Stephanie’s research is interdisciplinary in focus and methods to address how the brain evolved to support complex behavior at the intersection of emotion and decision making. One focus is on empathy and altruism, particularly how others' states impact our own and motivate helping. Another focus is on decisions about resources, such as food, money, material goods, and charitable gifts, to address issues surrounding consumerism, hoarding, and pro-environmental behavior. She is currently fusing her lines of research to determine how best to promote altruism and charitable giving across racial and political divides and for other species and the natural environment, including collaborations with corporations and non-profit organizations. |  |
Amy Emberling | Amy Emberling has been an avid food lover and baker since her childhood in Nova Scotia, Canada. After high school, she moved to Cambridge, MA, and received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. She then followed her passion for food and learned to cook and bake at L’ecole de Gastronomie Francaise at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, France and Michigan restaurants. In 1999 she received her MBA from Columbia University. Amy came to Zingerman’s Bakehouse when it opened in 1992 as one of the original bakers on the staff of eight. She soon became the first manager of the bread bakery, and then the manager of the pastry kitchen. In 2000, Amy became Managing Partner at Zingerman’s Bakehouse. She is the co-author of the cookbook Zingerman’s Bakehouse. As well as teaching at BAKE! Amy presents for ZingTrain on business practices. A few of the Bakehouse items she is personally responsible for developing are the Old School Apple Pie, Buenos Aires Brownies, and our Gingerbread Coffee Cake. In addition to developing items, Amy is a promoter of classic bakery favorites from many cultures and has brought traditional standards to the Bakehouse such as Paris Brest, Hummingbird Cake, and Dobos Torta. Amy lives in Ann Arbor with her husband Geoff, their two grown children, Jake and Ruby, daughter in-law Emily and grandson Miles. |  |
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. | |
Erin Wakeland | Erin Wakeland is a multidisciplinary artist focused in social practice, painting, and fiber work. She often uses recycled materials and has retained the description “thrifty, scrappy, and imaginative.” Erin is currently renovating a house in Detroit. Her BFA thesis was published by Ann Arbor District Library and is available for purchase IRL or pursue online. |  |
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes | Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is an Ann Arbor-based Puerto Rican writer. He is author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) and of Escenas transcaribeñas: Ensayos sobre teatro, performance y cultura (Isla Negra Editores, 2018) and coeditor with Deborah R. Vargas and Nancy Raquel Mirabal of Keywords for Latina/o Studies (New York University Press, 2017). His book Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2021 as part of the Triangulations: Lesbian/Gay/Queer Theater/Drama/Performance series and received the 2021-2022 Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from CLAGS, the Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York. He has published two books of fiction: Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails (Bilingual Press, 2009) and Abolición del pato (Terranova, 2013). He is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the former director and core faculty member of the Latina/o Studies Program. He is also Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Women's and Gender Studies. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he received his AB from Harvard (1991) and his MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia (1999). He has coedited queer issues of CENTRO Journal, Sargasso, and Hostos Review/Revista Hostosiana and has published two books of fiction, Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails and Abolición del pato. Larry performs in drag as Lola von Miramar since 2010, and has appeared in several episodes of the YouTube series Cooking with Drag Queens. | |
A.H. Kim | A.H. Kim (Ann) was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. as a young child. Ann was educated at Harvard College and Berkeley Law, practiced corporate law for many years, and served as chief of staff to the CEO and head of investor relations at a Fortune 200 company. Ann is the proud mother of two sons, a long time cancer survivor, and community volunteer. After raising her family in the Bay Area, Ann and her husband now call Ann Arbor home. |  |
Steven Harper Piziks | Steven Harper Piziks was born with a name that no one can reliably spell or pronounce, so he often writes under the pen name Steven Harper. He lives in Michigan with his family. When not at the keyboard, he plays the folk harp, fiddles with video games, and pretends he doesn’t talk to the household cats. In the past, he’s held jobs as a reporter, theater producer, secretary, and substitute teacher. He maintains that the most interesting thing about him is that he writes books. Steven is the creator of The Silent Empire series, the Clockwork Empire steampunk series, and the Books of Blood and Iron series for Roc Books. All four Silent Empire novels were finalists for the Spectrum Award, a first! Fortunately, his story “Eight Mile and the City” in the anthology When Worlds Collide won the 2022 Washington Science Fiction Association Award for small press. You can find him elsewhere on-line by searching for his social media. | |
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. | |
Patti Smith | Ann Arbor townie Patti Smith is a former legal aid lawyer and current special education teacher. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Adrian College with highest honors in 1994, a Doctor of Law from University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Law in 1996, and a Master's Degree with Highest Honors from Eastern Michigan University in 2012. She is the author of four history books: Images of America--Downtown Ann Arbor, A History of the People's Food Co-op Ann Arbor, Vanishing Ann Arbor, and Michigan Beer: A Heady History. She has written for Concentrate, Mittenbrew, The Ann, AADL's Pulp blog, and the Ann Arbor Observer. Patti serves as a commissioner for the Recreation Advisory Commission, as a storyteller in the Ann Arbor Storytellers' Guild, and as a volunteer DJ for WCBN. Patti is a frequent public speaker around town, curating HERsay (an all-woman variety show), GROWN FOLKS READING (storytime for grownups), MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT? (all-lawyer show) and telling stories at Ignite, Nerd Nite, Tellabration and Telling Tales Out of School. She lives with her husband, Ken Anderson, and dog Pugsley Anderson-Smith, in the Village--truly vintage living in her favorite city on earth. | |
Ken MacGregor | When I was a kid, I wanted more than anything to be an actor. To tread the boards onstage, wowing audience members with my ability to slip seamlessly into a character. For a while, I realized that dream. I even had an agent, in St. Louis, Missouri, who got me some TV gigs, including an appearance on the Discovery Channel. All that time, though, I was also writing stuff. And, it crawled further toward the front of my brain. I wrote and performed sketch comedy for about five years, in St. Louis, and when I moved back to Michigan. I wrote a zombie movie (which we made. It’s called “The Quirk and the Dead” and it’s on YouTube. Go watch it. It’s only 16 minutes. I can wait…Pretty good, huh? Thanks. So, eventually, the guy I was making movies with (Hi, Brian!) told me to stop sending him script after script after script and to turn them into short stories. Thank goodness he did, because it turns out I love doing this! | |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
