Meet your local authors!

Jasmin An

Poetry

Jasmine An comes from the Midwest. Her poetry and non-fiction can be found in Black Warrior Review’s Boyfriend Village, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nat. Brut, Waxwing and Best New Poets 2020. She is author of two chapbooks of poetry, Naming the No-Name Woman (Two Sylvias Press, 2016) and Monkey Was Here (Porkbelly Press, 2020), and Poetry Editor at Agape Editions. Her PhD dissertation in English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan focuses on 21st century poets who co-opt bureaucratic paperwork as a response to the impact of U.S. empire in Southeast Asia.​ Her academic work of writing about poems and poets she admires is one way of honoring and caring for the community through which she’s learned to encounter and understand the world. Jasmine is a member of the Digital Inequality Lab, an interdisciplinary group of scholars exploring questions of power and our digital reality through humanities and culture centered methods. They published a co-authored "Lag Manifesto" meditating on the intersections between the twinned pandemics of COVID-19 and anti-Black racism with the journal Afterimage. Jasmine presented at the 2020 Council of Thai Studies Annual Gathering, where her paper, “a handful of syllables tossed back across the water:” negotiating diasporic Thai American gender identity through poetic practice, won the Graduate Student Paper Prize.

https://www.jasmineanho.com/

Ellen Craine

Collection, Inspiration

Grief and Loss Expert Ellen Craine is a licensed clinical and macro social worker in the State of Michigan, founder of Craine Counseling and Consulting Group, and has over 25 years of experience working with couples, families, groups, and individuals in a variety of capacities. She has been a divorce and family mediator and parenting coordinator, working with high-conflict parents to improve their ability to co-parent more effectively. She is a relationship and life coach and therapist, incorporating the science of success with her social work experience.

Ellen is a #1 International Bestselling author of Women Who Dream, Women Who Empower, and Leading with Legacy. All are in the Kate Butler’s Impact Book Series. Ellen writes on the topics of childhood cancer, her breast cancer journey, the loss of her husband to a brain tumor––and how to rise above the challenges presented by life. She is a Co-Associate Producer of the documentary, Authentic Conversations: Deep Talk with the Masters, written, directed, and produced by LA Emmy-nominated Dr. Angela Sadler Williamson. Ellen is a co-coordinating producer on the documentary, Authentic Conversations: Voices Rise in Unity, also written, directed, and produced by LA Emmy-nominated Dr. Angela Sadler Williamson. This is a documentary about social justice and pays tribute to the civil rights icon, Rosa Parks.

https://www.crainecounseling.com/

Raymond De Young

Academic, Local Literature

Raymond De Young is a broadly trained psychologist, planner, and engineer. He is Associate Professor of Environmental Psychology and Planning in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. He focuses on the process of re-localization, a response to emerging biophysical limits and the consequences of having deeply disrupted the Earth's ecosystems. He applies conservation and environmental psychology to the challenge of helping people envision and adopt behaviors that support an urgent transition to a life lived within local resource limits. Despite what for some people is a dismal forecast, his work is decidedly hopeful.

His theoretical and empirical research includes exploring how people pre-familiarize themselves with the coming resource downshift, motivate stewardship, and use nature to restore the mental vitality needed for responding to the lean yet fascinating times ahead. Current projects include examining the psychological foundations of behavioral entrepreneurship and voluntary simplicity, and the benefits embedded in pursuing a low-input agrarian society.

https://localizationpapers.org/

Paul Leighton

Academic, Non-Fiction

Paul Leighton is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology at Eastern Michigan University. His interest is in how inequalities in society impact criminal justice, and how biases in criminal justice recreate social inequalities. He is a co-author of the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. Leighton is also a co-author of Class, Race, Gender & Crime. He co-authored one of the first books about private prisons, Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business and the Incarceration Binge (Rowman & Littlefield 2010). Leighton has been an editor of Critical Criminology: An International Journal, and has delivered many invited keynote addresses in the U.S., Canada and Norway. He regularly teaches classes on white collar crime, domestic violence, crime and technology, and marijuana decriminalization. Leighton is a past President of the Board of the local domestic violence shelter and currently heads the advisory board of the food pantry serving the university.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Paul-Leighton/author/B0BHRDFKYQ?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Sarah Weeks

Children's, Young Adult

Sarah Weeks has written and published more than 60 books and novels for young readers including the best selling novels, Pie, Save Me a Seat, and So B. It, now a feature film. Her most recent title Soof, is the companion book to her novel So B. It. In addition to writing, Sarah has served as a faculty member in the prestigious Writing Program at the New School in New York City as well as at Columbia University's Teachers College under the auspices of Lucy Calkins. Each year Sarah visits, both virtually and in-person with thousands of students in grades k-8. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she now resides in Jeffersonville, NY. She has two grown sons, Gabriel and Nathanial and is married to Jim Fyfe, a high school history teacher and presentation coach.

https://sarahweeks.com/