| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Julie Babcock | Julie Babcock is a poet and fiction writer who has lived in Ann Arbor since 2004. Her hybrid poetry collection, Rules for Rearrangement, wrought in response to the sudden death of her husband, won the 2019 Kithara Book Award and was published in December 2020. She is also the author of Autoplay, described as both an ode and an elegy to her Midwestern upbringing. Her poetry and fiction appear in The Rumpus, PANK, december magazine, and has been anthologized in New Poetry from the Midwest. She is the recipient of a Vermont Studio fiction fellowship and several Pushcart nominations. She is faculty in the Minor in Writing Program at University of Michigan and is deeply committed to helping students connect their embodied experiences to research-based academic work to support stories that have been silenced and/or suppressed. | |
John U. Bacon | New York Times bestselling author John U. Bacon has written thirteen books on sports, business, and history, seven of them national bestsellers. His previous book, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High School Hockey Team, was featured in the New York Times, and on Good Morning America, which called him “the REAL Ted Lasso”. He freelances for The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, and others, appears often on TV, including HBO, ESPN, and the Big Ten Network, and delivers weekly essays for Michigan Radio and occasionally NPR, where he won the prize for the nation’s best commentary in 2014. Bacon is a popular corporate speaker and leadership consultant, who occasionally teaches at the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award, given to one instructor annually for “Excellence in Teaching”. In 2019 he was appointed trustee of Michigan Technological University, where he delivered the commencement speech in 2022. John is a decent Spanish speaker, an average hockey player, and a poor piano player, but he still enjoys all three. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife and son. | |
Natalie Bakopoulos | Natalie Bakopoulos is the author of two novels: Scorpionfish (Tin House, 2020), which was a finalist for The Bridge/Il Ponte prize (2021), and The Green Shore (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Her work has appeared in Tin House, VQR, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, Granta, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, MQR, The Mississippi Review, O. Henry Prize Stories, and various other publications. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan, and in 2015 she was a Fulbright scholar in Athens. She’s an associate professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and a faculty member of the summer program Writing Workshops in Greece. | |
John Baldoni | Ranked globally as a top ten executive and leadership coach, John Baldoni is an internationally-recognized keynote speaker and author of 16 books that have been translated into ten languages. In 2022, Thinkers 360 named John a Top 10 Thought Leader for both Leadership and Management. Also in 2022, Global Gurus ranked John a Top 20 global leadership expert, a list he has been on since 2007. John lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife Gail who is a retired health care executive. They are the parents of two grown children and two young grandchildren. For fun John golfs and plays piano at an area hospital. | |
Gregg Barak | Gregg Barak is an Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Eastern Michigan University. Barak is an award-winning author and editor of books on crime, justice, media, violence, criminal law, homeless- ness, and human rights. He is also the co-founder and North American Editor of the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime. | |
Bernice Baran | Bernice Baran started her website, Bakery Baran, as a place to document all of the adventures in her everyday life. It was a creative outlet on days off of working as a nurse, and a place to come and look back on 10 years from now and see all her photos and thoughts from this time in her life. That quickly and exclusively turned into her baking and sharing her recipes. Over the last five years, Bernice stopped nursing, had two babies, and took Baran Bakery full-time. She wrote a cookbook, Frosted, and hosts cake decorating workshops. She can't wait to see what the next five years bring, but whatever it is, she knows it'll be sweet. |  |
Kimberley Barker | Kimberley Barker holds a Ph.D. in organization development from Benedictine University, Lisle, IL, and an MBA from Hawai’i Pacific University, Honolulu, HI. She has had extensive experience in organization development and change, cultural competence, human resources, global leadership, dilemma reconciliation, influence and negotiation management, teams, business research, and global communication. She teaches as a Full-Time Lecturer at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan. Her latest book is now available, “YOU Can Create Positive Change at Work,” by Kimberley Barker and Mary Ceccanese. |  |
Patrick Barry | Patrick Barry is a Clinical Assistant Professor and the Director of Digital Academic Initiatives at the University of Michigan Law School, as well as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of several books on advocacy and has recently launched a series of online courses called “Good with Words” on the educational platform Coursera. Among Professor Barry’s teaching awards are the Wayne Booth Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Prize, and the Outstanding Research Mentor Award. He has also served as the law school’s Faculty Ally for Diversity and been selected as a Faculty Fellow by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s Center for Educational Outreach. A member of the California bar who regularly partners with law firms, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, he is currently working on a project that uses immersive technology to help lawyers and other professionals give and receive more effective feedback. He has a Ph.D. in English in addition to a law degree, and in college he was an All-American soccer player. https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/patrick-barry | |
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. |  |
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. | |
Brenda E. Bentley | What started as a hobby during her children’s teen years turned into a passion project for Brenda E. Bentley who wrote River Walks Ann Arbor; Walking Loops Along the Huron River. She spent many days poring over historical maps at the Bentley Library, and many, many days exploring on foot all the streets of Ann Arbor to design pleasing walking loops. Brenda got to know the trees of the city and its wonderful pioneer history. During this time, she fell in love with the ice-age history of the surface geology of Michigan. She decided to make the moraines and river a central theme of the book, interlaced with one-page stories of cultural history. Since the book project, Brenda has continued to explore and learn about the wonderful glacial deposits covering Michigan. She has a rudimentary Youtube channel, Brenda Ellen Bentley, on which (for example) she posts videos focussed on the glacial remains seen from the Kiwanis Rail Trail between Tecumseh and Adrian. She and her husband moved to Ann Arbor in 1992, raised their children there, and now are delighted to be grandparents. They also carry the agony of losing their beautiful 18-year-old son in 2007. They look daily toward spiritual sources of strength along this rugged path. |  |
Angela K. Berent | Angela K. Berent always wanted to write, but she couldn’t find the time. Life on a lake in Chelsea with her husband and their teenage twin sons offers plenty of pleasant distractions. Finally, she discovered that she could write it all in short lists of three. As a teacher, she finds that creating lists is a great way to help reluctant middle school students write. A Midwesterner at heart, influenced by a few good years in California, her stories and lists are endless. Her goal is to help readers capture their memories quickly and easily. There is never a shortage of writing material, only of precious writing time! Everyone has stories to write, and that is why Berent created List Your Life: A Modern-Day Memoir, Trace Your Travels: An Adventure Journal, and Notes from the Nursery: A Keepsake. |  |
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. |  |
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. |  |
T. Casey Brennan | T. Casey Brennan is an Ann Arbor comic book writer and author. He wrote for Warren Publishing's horror comic anthologies Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. He also wrote for DC’s House of Mystery and Archie Comics’ Red Circle Sorcery. His full length novel Lesbo Cult! was published in 1979 and his story Carrier of the Serpent is included in Warren Eerie Archives Volume Eight, available at the Ann Arbor Public Library. | |
Vicki Brett-Gach | Vicki Brett-Gach is the creator of the Ann Arbor Vegan Kitchen blog, and the author of "The Plant-Based for Life Cookbook: Deliciously Simple Recipes to Nourish, Comfort, Energize and Renew” – published by Brooklyn Writers Press. Vicki is a Whole-Food Plant-Based Culinary Instructor, Certified Personal Chef, and Master-Certified Vegan Lifestyle Coach, and has been trained in Nutrition for a Healthy Heart, and in Dietary Therapy for Reversing Common Diseases. Vicki is Forks Over Knives Plant-Based Certified, and a graduate of Dr. McDougall’s Starch Solution Certification program, with certificates in Culinary Coaching (through Harvard Medical School and The Institute of Lifestyle Medicine), in Plant-Based Nutrition (through the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies), and in Wellness Counseling (through Cornell University). |  |
Don Brown | Don Brown dedicates his career to 'helping people with people' in leadership, sales, and customer service. Bilingual and experienced at the executive and line-level alike, you see the results of his work across dozens of industries, including brewing, automotive, airline, banking, and medical equipment. Speaking, writing, coaching, and selling to companies including Ford Motor Company, Anheuser-Busch, United Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Jaguar Cars, Hilton Hotels, and many, many more, Don takes great pride in long-standing customer relationships (some running well over twenty years). Don cherishes his start with Paul Hersey and Marshall Goldsmith and has authored books with each; What Got You Here Won't Get You There - in Sales! with Marshall, and Situational Service- Customer Care for the Practitioner with Dr. Hersey. Don's next book, Bring Out the Best in Every Employee-How to Engage Your Whole Team by Making Every Leadership Moment Count, was then followed by Simple Truths in Music and Life, a work that has led him to include the guitar in special keynote offerings. | |
John F. Buckley | John F. Buckley (he/him) came from Michigan, went to California for a couple of decades, and then returned to Ann Arbor, where he attended the Helen Zell Writers' Program before becoming a lecturer in the English department at the University of Michigan. His publications include several hundred poems, two chapbooks, the collection Sky Sandwiches, and with Martin Ott, Poets’ Guide to America and Yankee Broadcast Network. He needs to update his personal website. He’s the fiction editor for the journal Third Wednesday. Once he regains his gumption, he'd like to return to attending (and sometimes performing at) local literary events. | |
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. | |
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. | |
Irene Butter | Irene Butter was born in Berlin and grew up as a Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Europe. A survivor of two concentration camps, she came to the US in 1945. Since the late 80s Irene has been teaching students about the Holocaust and the lessons she learned during those traumatic years. Her memoir, Shores Beyond Shores, details her journey. Irene is a co-founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Medal & Lecture series at the University of Michigan, and one of the founders of Zeitouna, an Arab/Jewish Women's Dialogue group in Ann Arbor. |  |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
