| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Roy Sexton | Roy Sexton leads Clark Hill’s marketing, branding, and communications efforts in collaboration with the firm’s exceptional team of marketing and business development professionals. He has nearly 20 years of experience in marketing, communications, business development, and strategic planning. Roy also advises attorneys on marketing and business development strategy. He has been heavily involved regionally and nationally in the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) as a board member, content expert, and presenter. Roy posts movie musings on Facebook, much to the chagrin of true arbiters of taste. He tends to go see whatever film has been most obnoxiously hyped, marketed, and oversold in any given week…art films? Bah! Won’t find too many of those discussed here. Roy is a published author of two books: Reel Roy Reviews, Volumes 1 and 2. | |
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. |  |
Margaret A. Leary | I became intensely curious about "Who was William W. Cook?" when I joined the faculty at the University of Michigan Law School in 1973, after growing up in Oberlin, OH, and earning a B.A. (Cornell University), M.A. University of Minnesota), and J.D. (William Mitchell College of Law). My job in the Law Library provided an office in the magnificent Law Quadrangle, five buildings all given to Michigan by Cook. But no one knew who Cook was, where he worked, how he earned a fortune, and why he had given so much to the Michigan Law School. I was able to answer those questions only near the end of my career, when I spent six years researching Cook's life. In addition to being Director of the Law Library, I served on the City Zoning Board of Appeals and then Planning Commission; was elected to three terms on the Ann Arbor District Library Board, and was active in Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley, as well as professional library associations. https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/margaret-leary | |
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. | |
Merrie Haskell | Merrie Haskell's first three books are The Princess Curse, Handbook for Dragon Slayers, and The Castle Behind Thorns. She won the Schneider Family Book Award (Middle Grades) and the DetCon1 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction award, and she was twice a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Two of her books have been Junior Library Guild selections. Her short fiction has appeared in Nature, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. | |
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. | |
Jenna Dawson | As a young mother of two and an Early Childhood Educator, Jenna Dawson has always found play to be the most magical experience persons of all ages can have. She spends much of her days curiously exploring the world with her children, learning and teaching as she goes. | Kindness-Cover.pdf |
Shanna K. Kattari | Shanna K. Kattari, PhD, MEd, CSE, ACS (they/them/theirs) is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, and is the director of the [Sexuality | Relationships | Gender] Research Collective. A white, Jewish, nonbinary, disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, polyamorous, queer fat Femme, their practice and community background is as a board-certified sexologist, certified sexuality educator, and social justice activist. Dr. Kattari’s research focuses on three areas that often overlap; disability & ableism, sexuality & sexual health, and queer & trans affirming practice. Dr. Kattari also explores experiences of sexuality in marginalized communities, most notably disabled adults, LGBTQIA2S+ individuals, those practicing non-monogamy, and those practicing kink/Leather/BDSM. In their free time, they love to cook, garden, read, and DM a neuroqueer party of D&D. They live in Ypsilanti, and co-partner three opinionated cats and one sassy pitbull with their two partners. | |
Liz Crowe | A Kentucky native and graduate of the University of Louisville living in South Carolina, Liz Crowe lived in Ann Arbor for almost 20 years. Many of Liz’s books take place in southeast Michigan, and one in Ann Arbor specifically. She's spent her time as a three-continent expat trailing spouse, mom of three, real estate agent, brewery owner and bar manager, and is currently a digital marketing and fundraising consultant, in addition to being an award-winning author. With stories set in breweries, on the soccer pitch, inside fictional television stations and successful real estate offices, and even in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are compelling and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished. | |
Peter Ho Davies | Peter Ho Davies’ most recent books are the novel A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, long-listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and The Art of Revision: The Last Word, his first work of nonfiction. His previous novel, The Fortunes, a New York Times Notable Book, won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, a London Times Best Seller, was long-listed for the Booker Prize. He has also published two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World (winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, and the Oregon Book Award) and Equal Love (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book). Davies’ work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post and TLS among others, and been anthologized in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. In 2003 Granta magazine named him among its “Best of Young British Novelists.” Davies is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts and a winner of the PEN/Malamud and PEN/Macmillan Awards. Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, he now makes his home in the US. He has taught at the University of Oregon, Northwestern and Emory University, and is currently on faculty at the University of Michigan. | |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
