| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Angela Verges | Author, comedian, and edutainer Angela Verges was born in Detroit, MI. One of her favorite books as a youth was, Are you there God, it's me Margaret, by Judy Blume. In fact, she liked it so much that she wrote a book report on it in 6th grade and again in 8th grade. Shhh, don't tell her teachers. Angie began writing in 5th grade when she received her first diary. She continued keeping a journal through high school and college. Angie is a graduate of Michigan State University and currently working in the field of recreation. Writing has always been her passion and any time she can sprinkle it with humor, she does. Angela has two adult sons who quite often fill her humor bucket with their antics. Her book Menopause Ain't No Joke started as a collection of blog posts, which have also accompanied her on stage in comedy sets. Her words continue to scream onto the pages of journals, the back of envelopes, napkins or anything handy. Angie likes to write books for children and blog about parenting experiences as she practices being a grown up. | |
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 |
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). |  |
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. |  |
Allen Kurta | Dr. Allen Kurta received a B.S. and M.S. in Zoology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Biology from Boston University. His research for the past 45 years has focused on the ecology and behavior of bats, with an emphasis on two endangered species-the Indiana bat and the northern long- eared bat. He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals, and he has authored or edited several books, including Mammals of the Great Lakes Region, The Bats of Puerto Rico, and Bats of Michigan, with Bats of the West Indies scheduled to be released late in 2023. Dr. Kurta is Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee on Mammals for the Endangered Species Program of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Vice President of the Midwest Bat Working Group, and former Chairman of the Board of Directors for the North American Society for Bat Research. He currently is a professor of biology at Eastern Michigan University. | |
Sam Erman | Sam Erman, is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. A scholar of law and history, his research and teaching focuses on citizenship, the Constitution, empire, race, and legal change. He is the author of Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018). The book lays out the tragic story of how the United States denied Puerto Ricans full citizenship following annexation of the island in 1898. As America became an overseas empire, a handful of remarkable Puerto Ricans debated with U.S. legislators, presidents, judges, and others over who was a citizen and what citizenship meant. This struggle caused a fundamental shift in constitutional jurisprudence: away from the post-Civil War regime of citizenship, rights, and statehood and toward doctrines that accommodated racist imperial governance. https://www.amazon.com/Almost-Citizens-Constitution-Studies-History/dp/1108415490 |  |
Alison Swan | Alison Swan’s fifth book, A Fine Canopy, was released by Wayne State University Press in 2020 and recommended by Orion magazine, LitHub, and Publisher’s Weekly, among others. Ann Arbor-based Alice Greene & Company published her poetry chapbooks Before the Snow Moon—a fine-art collaboration with artists Jean Buescher Bartlett (of Ann Arbor) and Melanie Boyle (formerly of Ann Arbor)—and Dog Heart (Alice Greene), also a collaboration with Bartlett and Boyle. Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes (Michigan State University Press), Alison Swan’s brain child and labor of love, is a 2007 Library of Michigan Notable Book. She is co-author of The Saugatuck Dunes: Artists Respond to a Freshwater Landscape. Her poem Porch Swing (Bloodroot Press, 1997), an early collaboration with Bartlett, has been acquired by the New York Public Library and other rare book collections. Among her awards are a Mesa Refuge Residency and the Michigan Environmental Council’s Petoskey Prize for Environmental Leadership. Swan founded Eco Book Club at Ann Arbor’s Literati Bookstore in 2015 and has hosted it ever since. In the 1990s she directed promotions and events at Ann Arbor’s late Shaman Drum Bookshop (“Academic, scholarly, and independent, since 1983,” a tagline she penned). Also in the 1990s, she wrote a book column for Current magazine and author interviews and reviews for a weekly independent newspaper based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and earned her B.A. in English literature at Michigan State University. After stints on the east and west coasts of North America, she settled back in Michigan’s lower peninsula where, for many years, she taught literature and writing at Western Michigan University’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. She has been active in efforts to protect and preserve the Saugatuck Dunes on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan since 2001. | |
Jim Mangi | After somewhat accidentally volunteering for, and serving in, Vietnam, Jim Mangi got a PhD in ecology and spent 40 years in consulting, predicting the effects of things like power plants, dams, pipelines, and military equipment. He wrote over 100 public reports, earning praise for their clarity to the public audience. Jim sold his company to care for his wife, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and as a form of respite from caregiving, began writing alternate histories. One of his books rigorously and credibly explores the “What If” of getting the atomic bomb somewhat sooner, and the other later than we actually did. In both books, our modern world, from the geopolitics of Europe, and of East Asia, to US presidential politics, to the space race, to the economy of Michigan, turn out rather differently from what we have today, and from each other. Jim lives in Saline where he continues caregiving for his wife. He volunteers with the Alzheimer’s Association teaching classes on dementia and caregiving, and he chairs Dementia Friendly Saline, educating communities on how to make life less difficult and more dignified for friends and neighbors living with dementia. He has dedicated both books to his wife, “who has cheerfully lived in an alternative reality for years”, and the dedications further commits that all of Jim’s proceeds go to the Alzheimer’s Association. Saline’s Fine Print bookshop carries both titles: Dropping the Atomic Bomb—on Hirohito and Hitler and The First Atomic Bomb-An Alternate History. | |
Kamron Reynolds | Kamron Reynolds, of Kam Komics, is your friendly neighborhood comic book artist and rapper. As Kam says, “I JUST WANT TO HELP CREATE DIVERSE NEW CHARACTERS AND STORIES THAT CAN STAND THE TEST OF TIME, LIKE SO MANY ICONIC CHARACTERS FANS HAVE BEEN IN LOVE WITH FOR OVER A CENTURY. THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IS CHANGING EVERYDAY. AS MUCH AS I LOVE SPIDER-MAN, BATMAN, SUPERMAN, X-MEN, THE FANTASTIC FOUR INCREDIBLE HULK, ETC. THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE IN THIS NEW ERA OF COMICS. WE NEED MORE DIVERSE CHARACTERS WITH DEPTH. IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT HAVING BLACK/WHITE CHARACTERS ANYMORE. WE NEED MORE CHARACTERS THAT ARE HISPANIC, ASIAN, INDONESIAN, GAY, STRAIGHT, MALE, FEMALE, TRANS-GENDER, DISABLED, KIDS, TEENAGERS, ADULTS, SENIOR CITIZENS, ETC. AND THE ONLY WAY TO GET THIS TYPE OF DIVERSITY IS TO ENCOURAGE DIVERSE CREATORS AND ARTISTS. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE COMICS NOW. AND WE AS CREATORS AND ARTISTS HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO DIG DEEPER TO CREATE NEW ART AND LITERATURE. JUST LIKE ANYTHING IT TAKES TIME. AND I JUST HOPE MY WORK REACHES THE MOST DIVERSE COMMUNITY THAT IT CAN.” | |
David Calonne | David Stephen Calonne is senior lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University. He is author of several works, including R. Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self, published by University Press of Mississippi; William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being; The Spiritual Imagination of the Beats; Diane di Prima: Visionary Poetics and the Hidden Religions; and biographies of Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller. Calonne is also editor of five volumes of uncollected Bukowski stories and essays as well as Conversations with Gary Snyder and Conversations with Allen Ginsberg, both published by University Press of Mississippi. He previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago. | |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
