| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Emily Siwek | Emily Siwek lives in Ann Arbor, MI and loves finding adventure in her hometown with her husband and two children. She has worked in a variety of creative industries from interior design to trend forecasting and enjoys coloring outside the lines. | |
Andrei Markovits | Andrei Markovits is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies and teaches in the Department of Political Science, the Department of Sociology, and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He was born in the West Romanian city of Timisoara where he grew up as the only son in a tri-lingual (Hungarian, Romanian, German) middle class Jewish family ravaged by the Holocaust. He completed his secondary education in Vienna, Austria before embarking on his post-secondary studies at Columbia University where he spent nine years receiving five degrees in the process. He then became an associate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University of which he was a member for nearly 25 years while holding professorships at Wesleyan University, Boston University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1999 where he has been ever since. His more than 20 edited and authored books have been translated into many languages (German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Korean among others). The topics of his books range from European anti-Americanism to women's soccer; from sports to dog rescue. They have been published by the finest university presses from Princeton University Press to Cornell University Press; from the University of Michigan Press to Cambridge University Press. His memoir entitled THE PASSPORT AS HOME: COMFORT IN ROOTLESSNESS published by the Central European University Press in Budapest and Vienna in 2021. The book has also appeared in a German translation and will be published in Romanian. | |
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. |  |
Grace Shackman | Grace Shackman is an Ann Arbor writer who has published four books on local history as well as many local history articles for the Ann Arbor Observer and other local publications. Her books include Ann Arbor Observed, published by the University of Michigan Press, 2006, Ann Arbor in the 19th Century, Ann Arbor in the 20th Century, both published by Arcadia Publishing, 2001 and 2002, and Webster: A Time, A Place, A People, published by the Webster United Church of Christ and the Webster Township Historical Society, 2007. Her Ann Arbor Observer articles can be accessed on the Ann Arbor District Library's web page under "Local History." She also worked as a reporter for the Chelsea Standard for three years. Shackman received a B.A.in history from the University of Michigan and a M. A. in history at Eastern Michigan University. In addition to writing, she has taught local history at Washtenaw Community College in their Community Enrichment Program and at the Adult Learners Institute located in Chelsea. She was elected and served as a Washtenaw County Commissioner, 1986-1994. She is at present on the board of A2Modern, a group researching and championing local mid-century architecture. | |
Amy Emberling | Amy Emberling has been an avid food lover and baker since her childhood in Nova Scotia, Canada. After high school, she moved to Cambridge, MA, and received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. She then followed her passion for food and learned to cook and bake at L’ecole de Gastronomie Francaise at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, France and Michigan restaurants. In 1999 she received her MBA from Columbia University. Amy came to Zingerman’s Bakehouse when it opened in 1992 as one of the original bakers on the staff of eight. She soon became the first manager of the bread bakery, and then the manager of the pastry kitchen. In 2000, Amy became Managing Partner at Zingerman’s Bakehouse. She is the co-author of the cookbook Zingerman’s Bakehouse. As well as teaching at BAKE! Amy presents for ZingTrain on business practices. A few of the Bakehouse items she is personally responsible for developing are the Old School Apple Pie, Buenos Aires Brownies, and our Gingerbread Coffee Cake. In addition to developing items, Amy is a promoter of classic bakery favorites from many cultures and has brought traditional standards to the Bakehouse such as Paris Brest, Hummingbird Cake, and Dobos Torta. Amy lives in Ann Arbor with her husband Geoff, their two grown children, Jake and Ruby, daughter in-law Emily and grandson Miles. |  |
Claudia Whitsitt | Claudia Whitsitt began creating stories when she was very little, and once in the 5th grade, she spent hours recording them in longhand on looseleaf paper. When she wasn't writing, she was reading. Claudia grew up to be a teacher and mother, but after raising her children, went back to writing. She is proud to be an author of both children's and adult novels. In addition to writing the award-winning historical fiction Kids Like You Series, Claudia has also authored The Wrong Guy, loosely based on the Michigan Murders of the late sixties. She is the author of the Samantha Series as well, including Identity Issues, Intimacy Issues, Internal Issues, and Inherited Issues. Recently, she has released three books in her new Love and Loss Series, Black Ice, Lake Fog, and Lingering Clouds. This series is unique in that the characters in each book are different, and the series focuses on the themes of love and loss. | |
Stephanie Heit | Stephanie Heit (she/her) is a queer disabled poet, dancer, teacher, and codirector of Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space on Anishinaabe land in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She is a Zoeglossia Fellow, bipolar, a shock/psych system survivor, a mad activist, and a member of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. Her hybrid memoir poem PSYCH MURDERS (Wayne State University Press, 2022) takes you inside psychiatric wards and shock treatments toward new futures of care. The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System, 2017) explores the seams of language, movement, and mental health difference. Her work has appeared in journals such as Orion, Sonora Review, BathHouse, Venti, Rogue Agent, Ecotone, Anomaly, and About Place. | |
Paul Leighton | 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. | |
Steven Harper Piziks | Steven Harper Piziks was born with a name that no one can reliably spell or pronounce, so he often writes under the pen name Steven Harper. He lives in Michigan with his family. When not at the keyboard, he plays the folk harp, fiddles with video games, and pretends he doesn’t talk to the household cats. In the past, he’s held jobs as a reporter, theater producer, secretary, and substitute teacher. He maintains that the most interesting thing about him is that he writes books. Steven is the creator of The Silent Empire series, the Clockwork Empire steampunk series, and the Books of Blood and Iron series for Roc Books. All four Silent Empire novels were finalists for the Spectrum Award, a first! Fortunately, his story “Eight Mile and the City” in the anthology When Worlds Collide won the 2022 Washington Science Fiction Association Award for small press. You can find him elsewhere on-line by searching for his social media. | |
Carla Harryman | Carla Harryman is a poet, experimental prose writer, essayist, performance writer, and collaborator in multi-disciplinary performance. The author of twenty-five books, she is known for her boundary breaking investigations of genre, non/narrative poetics, and text-based performances. The influence of improvised music, electronic sampling, and collaborative practices animate her recent works. Recent publications include Cloud Cantata (Pamenar, 2022); the poet's theater play Good Morning (PAJ: Journal of Performance and Art, MIT Press, 2022); and Sue in Berlin and Sue á Berlin (trans. Sabine Huynh), a collection of poetry and performance writings composed between 2001-2015 and released in 2018 by PURH "To Series" in separate English and French volumes. Other key publications in the last two decades include Adorno's Noise (2008), an experiment in prose poetry and "the essay as form," the collaborative ten-volume work, The Grand Piano: Experiments in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco 1975-1980 (completed in 2010); the poet's novel Gardener of Stars (2001); W-/M-(2013), and the essay Artifact of Hope (2017). Her awards include an artist award in poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, New York; a grant (with Erling Wald) from Opera America: Next Stage, an NEA Consortium Playwright Commission; several awards from The Foundation for Poetry; and the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished Faculty Award for Creative Activity at Eastern Michigan University. Her work has been translated into many languages and her poetry, prose and plays have been represented in over thirty national and international anthologies. | |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
