| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Tammy Coxen | Tammy Coxen is the founder and Chief Tasting Officer of Tammy's Tastings, where she's been sharing her enthusiasm for food and drink for over 15 years. Since 2011 she has been teaching interactive hands-on cocktail classes to individuals, groups, and companies for events ranging from parties to corporate team building. Starting in 2020 she also took those classes online, exploring the history, stories, and mixing techniques behind some of the world’s most famous cocktails. She is the co-author of the cocktail book Cheers to Michigan, co-host of a regular cocktail segment on Michigan Radio (her local NPR affiliate), and has written for Hour Detroit magazine and other publications. She'll be launching the My Tiny Bottles podcast, where she'll explore her grandmother's legacy of miniature liquor bottles, one tiny bottle at a time. |  |
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. | |
Marianne K. Martin | Marianne K. Martin is one of the best-selling lesbian romance authors in the history of the genre, and her books have gained a wide international readership. She is the author of eleven novels. Her highly successful novels include the Lambda Literary Award finalists Tangled Roots, Under the Witness Tree, Mirrors, and For Now, For Always. In 2012, she was honored with the Trailblazer Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society and in 2013 she was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame. Marianne is also one of the founding partners of Bywater Books. Her responsibilities include managing general operations, as well as the Bywater Prize for Fiction, and working with Bywater’s new writers. | |
Carey F. Whitepigeon | Carey F. Whitepigeon is a member of a Potawatomi tribe, one of the Three Fires of the Anishinaabe. A lifelong resident of the state of Michigan, she lives in Ann Arbor with her husband, three children, and two cats. She holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the University of Michigan. Carey’s career has included marketing, market research, business consulting, project management, and non-profit management. Her professional travels have given Carey the opportunity to meet and work with amazing people in countries around the world, for which she is grateful. As a reader and writer, Carey's first love has been science fiction and fantasy ever since she read Tolkien’s The Hobbit in second grade. In addition to reading, Carey enjoys travel, hiking, kayaking, and spending time with her family. | |
Carol E. Anderson | Carol E. Anderson is a life coach and former organizational consultant who grew up in Detroit. She has traveled the world extensively for work and pleasure and philanthropy. She holds a doctorate in Spiritual Studies, and masters degrees in Organizational Development, Film and Video, and Creative Nonfiction. Carol is the founder of Rebellious Dreamers, a twenty-year strong non-profit organization that has helped women over 35 realize dreams they’d deferred and women of all ages come into their own. She is the author of the essay “What is it About Memoir?” in The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey, and co-author of the essay “Deeper Power” in Enlightened Power: How Women are Transforming the Practice of Leadership.” Carol’s passions are photography, travel and empowering women to live their dreams. Her goal at this stage is to live with a peaceful heart, which she cultivates through walks in nature, a meditation practice, and heartfelt conversation with friends. She lives with the love of her life, Archer Christian, and their sassy, lovable pup, Saxon, in a nature sanctuary in Ann Arbor, MI. |  |
Petra Kuppers | Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a disability culture activist, a writer, and a community performance artist. Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods, and uses ecosomatics, performance, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. Her third poetry collection, Gut Botany, was named one of the top ten US poetry books of 2020 by the New York Public Library, and won the 2021/22 Creative Book Award by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Petra is Artistic Director of The Olimpias, an international disability culture collective, and she co-creates Turtle Disco, a somatic writing studio. She is the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. | |
Cynthia Leitich Smith | Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee citizen) is a NYT bestselling author and was named the 2021 NSK Neustadt Laureate. Her novel HEARTS UNBROKEN won an American Indian Youth Literature Award, and her recent books include ANCESTOR APPROVED: INTERTRIBAL STORIES FOR KIDS, an ALA Notable Book and winner of the Reading of the West Book Award for Young Readers as well as SISTERS OF THE NEVERSEA, which received six starred reviews and made numerous “best of the year” lists. Her debut tween novel RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME was named one of the 30 Most Influential Children’s Books of All Time by Book Riot. Her 2023 release is the YA novel HARVEST HOUSE. Cynthia is the author-curator of Heartdrum, an imprint of HarperChildren’s and was the inaugural Katherine Paterson Chair at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program. |  |
Mary Ceccanese | Mary Ceccanese is the owner and principal consultant of Dynamic Connections LLC. Celebrating almost fifteen years of presenting interactive seminars and workshops to all levels of staff in both for-profit and non-profit organizations, she engages attendees with research-based practices applied to work-life scenarios. She has a BA in Human Resource Administration and recently retired from working at the University of Michigan for more than thirty years. In 2019 she was presented with a University of Michigan Staff Impact Award. In addition, she was one of the 2019 "Top Ten Business Women" in the country of the American Business Women's Association. Mary published her first book for staff titled, YOU Can Create Positive Change at Work, and in 2020 released her first product, High-Quality Connection Cards. |  |
Linda W. Fitzgerald | Linda Wirtanen Fitzgerald grew up in Garrison Keillor country, primarily Michigan's upper peninsula. After graduating from Northern Michigan University, she headed to Ann Arbor and a graduate fellowship at the University of Michigan. With a master's degree in hand and a national recession raging, she tried her hand at magazine editing, newspaper reporting, even script writing for sales seminars and consoled herself in off hours by devouring mystery novels. Ultimately, she found her professional home as senior copywriter in an Ann Arbor ad agency and, from there, went on to launch Fitzgerald Communications. Twenty-some years and thousands of projects later, one career goal still eluded her: she had never written a mystery novel. In the summer of 2016, she crossed that item off her life list with the publication of Death at the Doorstep, the debut adventure of Ann Arbor freelance writer and amateur sleuth Karin Niemi. The second novel in the series, A Superior Way to Die, is set in the Upper Peninsula. | |
Stephen Rush | Stephen Rush has enjoyed premieres in five continents and released many publications of his musical compositions. He has written 5 operas, chamber, electronic works, concertos, and symphonies, performed by the Detroit Symphony and Warsaw National Symphonies. He has written books, including a book on liturgy, a work with Ornette Coleman, and anti-racist and gender inclusive Music Theory. His recordings appear on ESP Disk', Innova, Equilibrium, Deep Listening, Centaur, MMC, RogueArts (Paris), Summit and CALA Records. As a Professor of Music at University of Michigan, he founded the Digital Music Ensemble, who worked with Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, and premiered works by John Cage, Philip Glass and La Monte Young. Rush has over 35 CDs released, and has performed or recorded with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Eliott Sharp, Steve Swell, Eugene Chadbourne, Peter Kowald and his jazz trio "Naked Dance" (Jeremy Edwards and Andrew Bishop). He is also deeply invested in Installation Art, collaborating with Michael Gould and Nobel Prize winning physicist Henry Pollack, and physicists at the Fermi Lab. | |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
