| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Zilka Joseph | Zilka Joseph was born in Mumbai, lived in Kolkata, and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Her work is influenced by Indian and Western cultures, and her Bene Israel roots. She has been nominated for several awards, been featured on NPR/Michigan Radio, and podcasts like Rattlecast and Culturico. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Daily, Frontier Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, Rattle, Asia Literary Review, The Punch Magazine, Poetry at Sangam, Review Americana, and in anthologies like 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium, Home: Michigan State University Libraries Short Edition, Kali Project, RESPECT: An Anthology of Detroit Music Poetry, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, and Converse: Contemporary Indian Poetry in English. Her chapbooks, Lands I Live In and What Dread, were nominated for PEN and Pushcart awards. Sharp Blue Search of Flame (Wayne State University Press) was a Foreword INDIES Award finalist. Her third chapbook Sparrows and Dust is a Notable Best Indie Award winner and a Notable Asian American Poetry Book. In Our Beautiful Bones, her newest book, is also a Foreword INDIES Award finalist, and has been nominated for PEN, Pushcart, Griffin and American Book awards. She received a Zell Fellowship, the Michael R. Gutterman Award for poetry, and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship from the University of Michigan. She teaches creative writing workshops, and is a freelance editor and manuscript advisor. | |
Lauren Friedman | Lauren Friedman is a Product Designer, artist, and the author/illustrator of 50 Ways to Wear a Scarf, 50 Ways to Wear Denim, and her latest title, 50 Ways to Wear Accessories, all published by Chronicle Books. Based in Ann Arbor, MI, she is the creator of the My Closet in Sketches project, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Lucky Magazine, Travel + Leisure Magazine, and The Washington Post. Her books have sold over 200,000 copies and have been carried at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, Paper Source, Target, and retailers across the world. | |
Eileen Pollack | Eileen Pollack is the author of several novels and award winning story collections. Of which, Breaking and Entering was named a New York Times Editor's Choice selection. Eileen's work of creative nonfiction Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull was made into a movie starring Jessica Chastain. Her investigative memoir The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club was published in 2015; a long excerpt appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine and went viral. Her works have been selected for Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. Eileen lived in Ann Arbor for 27 years and directed the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. She now lives and writes in Boston but many of her books, stories, and essays are set in Michigan/Ann Arbor. | |
Stephanie Tharp | Stephanie Tharp is an industrial designer and educator— currently an Associate Professor and an Undergraduate Program Co-Director at the University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art & Design. Her recent research surrounds the theory and practice of discursive design. One current project is a collaboration with chronic pain specialists exploring public engagement with medical research and challenging popular stigmas of pain sufferers. |  |
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. | |
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. | |
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. |  |
Samuel Damren | Samuel Damren is a lifelong Michigan resident, attorney, and author, his legal career spanning over four decades. Damren earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in cultural anthropology with a minor in music composition and received his Juris Doctor from Wayne State University. He served as a private mediator and arbitrator focused on commercial litigation representing prominent entrepreneurs and companies in Southeastern Michigan. Damren lectured on prosecutorial ethics at the University of Michigan Law School and served pro bono as a hearing panelist on the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board for over twenty years. Since retirement, he has been contributing periodic commentaries on a variety of subjects with a legal bent to the Detroit Legal News and its family of newspapers in Michigan. Damren is the author of the books, What Justice Looks Like and Wintercut. A twenty-fifth anniversary ebook publication of Wintercut has been released. Damren is also the author of numerous articles in law reviews and historical journals discussing the intersection of legal theories and law with other disciplines and landmark legal cases. He and his wife are members of the Henry P. Tappan Society at the University of Michigan and benefactors of the Dziewiatkowski Awards at the Medical and Dental Schools.They are the parents of three children. Upon returning to Ann Arbor in 2018, they now live two miles from the home he grew up in and on the edge of the same forest that he walked through as a boy. | |
Andre F. Peltier | Andre F. Peltier (he/him) is a Pushcart and Best of the Net Nominee and a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches writing and a wide variety of literature classes. He lives in Ypsilanti with his wife, children, dog and turtles. His poetry has recently appeared in various publications like CP Quarterly, Lavender and Lime Review, About Place, Novus Review, Fiery Scribe, and Fahmidan Journal, and most recently in Menacing Hedge, The Brazos Review, and Idle Ink. His debut poetry collection, Poplandia, is available from Alien Buddha. In his free time, he obsesses over soccer and comic books. |  |
Kimberley Kinder | Kimberley Kinder is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and the Faculty Director for the Healthy Cities Certificate Program at the University of Michigan. Dr. Kinder has degrees in geography, architecture, urban design, and environmental policy. She received her master's degree from the University of Oxford and her doctorate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the social, cultural, and political aspects of urban landscapes. Kinder is the author of three books. Her most recent book, The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), explores how activists use spatial agency for organizing. Her previous book, DIY Detroit: Making Do in a City without Services (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), explores how residents in Detroit cope with market disinvestment and government contraction by taking charge of abandoned landscapes. Kinder's first book, The Politics of Urban Water: Changing Waterscapes in Amsterdam (University of Georgia Press, 2015), explores how active residents in Amsterdam deploy waterscapes when rallying for political reform. Kinder is currently working on a book about the cultural geography of invisible exile. https://taubmancollege.umich.edu/faculty/directory/kimberley-kinder | |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
