| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
|---|---|---|
Polly Rosenwaike | Polly Rosenwaike’s story collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You, was published by Doubleday, and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Best Short Story Collections of 2019” and Glamour’s “Best Books of 2019.” Her fiction and book reviews have appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, Glimmer Train, the New York Times Book Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in Ann Arbor, where she works as a freelance editor and serves as Fiction Editor for Michigan Quarterly Review. |  |
Rachel Rothschild | Rachel Emma Rothschild is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Previously a legal fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity, she holds a J.D., cum laude, from NYU School of Law, where she was a Furman Academic Scholar, and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She earned her B.A., magna cum laude, from Princeton University. From 2015 to 2017, she was an assistant professor and faculty fellow at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Rachel's scholarship sits at the intersection of law, history, and policy. She is the author of Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution (University of Chicago Press, 2019), and has written numerous articles and essays on pollution problems for academic journals and media outlets. Her recent research examines climate change litigation as well as the past and present regulation of toxic substances. https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/rachel-rothschild |  |
Jonathan Rowe | Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Jonathan Rowe has won two Avery Hopwood writing awards at the University of Michigan, the Marion Kirkwood Best Brief award at Stanford Law School, and the Thomas Cooley Prize for Best Brief in the Michigan Supreme Court. After law school, Jonathan worked five years as a Trial Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecuting police brutality and racial violence cases; ten years as a Senior Partner at Dykema Gossett PLLC in Michigan, specializing in media defense litigation; and ten years as a Partner in Soble Rowe Krichbaum LLP in Ann Arbor, broadening his practice to include plaintiff-side securities class action and tobacco litigation, and serving as a private mediator and arbitrator. In 2006 Jonathan Rowe retired from law practice to write novels full-time. He is the author of The Writing on the Wall (2003), A Question of Identity (2005), and The River of Strange People (2010). Jonathan and his wife, Susan Kessler, lived in Hawaii for 11 years, but recently returned to Ann Arbor, to be closer to their two children and grandchildren. | |
Anne Ruggles Gere | Anne Ruggles Gere is a professor of English and a professor of education at the University of Michigan. A high school English teacher before she took her PhD and became an academic, she has always been interested in writing. Questions that interest her include how people use different processes of writing to reach various goals, the kinds of learning that writing can enable, and how writers develop as they move from high school to college. Her most recent book, Developing Writers in HIgher Education: A Longitudinal Study, was a collaborative project based on surveys, samples of writing, and interviews with 169 undergraduates as they progressed from entering first-years to graduating seniors learning to identify necessary information for specific audiences and synthesizing feedback for stronger writing. |  |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
Nancy Shaw | Ann Arbor author Nancy Shaw got the idea for her best-selling picture book Sheep in a Jeep while stuck in the back seat on a family car trip. Seven more sheep books have followed. She also wrote Raccoon Tune (a Michigan Reads! book) and Elena's Story. She's received School Library Journal and Parents magazine Best Books of the Year citations, and the Reading Magic Award, among other honors. A Hopwood Award winner, she holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Harvard University. | |
Stacie Sheldon | Aanii / Boozhoo / Hello! My name is Stacie Sheldon. Chitwaadewegekwe nindizhinikaaz Anishinaabemong. Honor Beat Woman is my name in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe). Ajiijaak n'doodem. I am Crane Clan. I combine my rich work life as a UX practitioner with the passion I have for life as an Ojibwe person and language advocate. I am an author, and co-founder of http://www.ojibwe.net, where I lead technical development. I have served on the Board of Directors for American Indian Services in Lincoln Park, Michigan. Now a resident of Ann Arbor, MI, I grew up in the lakes and hills of Northern Michigan where I spent my summers swimming in our “great lakes” and winters exploring the woods. A lifelong runner, I can also be found on hikes with my dog, Nimkii, or playing guitar, piano, or singing. I’m a bookworm at heart, and I occasionally stay up way too late reading mystery novels--most recently, I’ve been unable to put down the Virgil Flowers series by John Sanford. |  |
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. | |
Patti Smith | Ann Arbor townie Patti Smith is a former legal aid lawyer and current special education teacher. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Adrian College with highest honors in 1994, a Doctor of Law from University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Law in 1996, and a Master's Degree with Highest Honors from Eastern Michigan University in 2012. She is the author of four history books: Images of America--Downtown Ann Arbor, A History of the People's Food Co-op Ann Arbor, Vanishing Ann Arbor, and Michigan Beer: A Heady History. She has written for Concentrate, Mittenbrew, The Ann, AADL's Pulp blog, and the Ann Arbor Observer. Patti serves as a commissioner for the Recreation Advisory Commission, as a storyteller in the Ann Arbor Storytellers' Guild, and as a volunteer DJ for WCBN. Patti is a frequent public speaker around town, curating HERsay (an all-woman variety show), GROWN FOLKS READING (storytime for grownups), MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT? (all-lawyer show) and telling stories at Ignite, Nerd Nite, Tellabration and Telling Tales Out of School. She lives with her husband, Ken Anderson, and dog Pugsley Anderson-Smith, in the Village--truly vintage living in her favorite city on earth. | |
Sondra Soderborg | I am a children's book writer. I have had many careers, including lawyer, teacher, and stay-at-home parent. All of that work has shaped and informed what I bring to writing. But finally finding the teachers and colleagues who helped me learn to write fiction has been a great joy in my life. I came to Ann Arbor from Salt Lake City in 1986 to attend the University of Michigan Law School. My husband and I were lucky enough to stay and raise our three great kids here. Erin Murphy of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency represents me. My debut novel, Sky Ropes, is published by Chronicle Books. |  |
Leslie Stainton | Leslie Stainton is the author of two nonfiction books, Lorca: A Dream of Life and Staging Ground: An American Theater and Its Ghosts. Her writing has appeared in The Sun, The American Scholar, River Teeth, The Southern Humanities Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. Her next book is about her slaveholding ancestors, the Scarletts of Georgia. | |
Barbara Stark-Nemon | Barbara Stark-Nemon, has written the award-winning novels Even in Darkness and Hard Cider. Her current work in progress is a 17h century European coming of age refugee story. Barbara has degrees from the University of Michigan in English, Art History and Communication Disorders. She writes novels, essays and short stories, and speaks at conferences, literary events, libraries and book clubs. She lives, writes, swims, cycles, gardens and does fiber art in Ann Arbor and Northport, MI. | |
Peter G. Stipe | Peter G. Stipe was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He retired from the Ann Arbor Police Department in 2004 as its most highly decorated officer. His assignments included the Special Tactics Unit, Detective Division, Field Training Officer and District Coordinator. A writer and Film Noir buff, he is the Author of “Badge 112”, a memoir. He resides in Michigan’s Irish Hills. | |
Ellen Stone | Ellen Stone grew up on the north branch of the Susquehanna River in the Appalachian Mountains of rural Pennsylvania. She advises a poetry club at Community High School and co-hosts a monthly poetry series in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ellen’s poems have appeared recently in Anti-Heroin Chic, Great Lakes Review, Rust + Moth and River Mouth Review among other places. She is the author of What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020) and The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Ellen’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net. | |
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. | |
Ian Tadashi Moore | Ian Tadashi Moore is a father, designer, musician, and artist from southeast Michigan. He grew up talking to the bugs in the back lawn and plinking melodies on piano keys. He likes the sounds words make and will probably never act his age. He has written, illustrated, and recorded three books & audiobooks: Zōsan, Tamaishi, and Where All the Little Things Live. | |
Charles Taylor | Cleveland native Charles Taylor and his wife, university administrator and award- winning children's book author Debbie Taylor, have lived and worked in Ann Arbor, Michigan for more than thirty years. An avid golfer, music collector and film buff, Charles is a longtime lecturer in English at the University of Michigan. He is author of the San Francisco-based thriller Dark Rhythm and the detective novel Watching, which is set in Southeast Michigan. | |
Keith Taylor | Keith Taylor was born in British Columbia in 1952. He spent his childhood in Alberta and his adolescence in Indiana. After several years of traveling, he moved to Michigan, where he earned his M.A. in English at Central Michigan University. He has worked as a camp-boy for a hunting outfitter in the Yukon, as a dishwasher in southern France, a housepainter in Indiana and Ireland, a freight handler, a teacher, a freelance writer, the co-host of a radio talk show, and as the night attendant at a pinball arcade in California. For more than twenty years he worked as a bookseller in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Then he taught in the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs at the University of Michigan, and directed the Bear River Writers Conference. From 2010–2018 he worked as the Poetry Editor at Michigan Quarterly Review. He retired from the University of Michigan in 2018. He lives with his wife in Ann Arbor; they have one daughter. | |
Bruce Tharp | Believed to be the first industrial designer to receive a PhD in anthropology (University of Chicago), in 1998 Bruce began researching the material culture of Indiana's Old Order Amish, focusing on the production & consumption of value. He first earned a BS in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University and a master’s degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute. In between his schooling, he served as a US Army nuclear weapons officer (Captain) in Germany. After researching the future of work and the workplace for Haworth Inc.'s design research think-tank, the Ideation Group, he began his teaching career. Over the last fifteen years he has been a tenured professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and currently at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. His and Stephanie's award-winning design studio has exhibited internationally, licensed designs for local and global companies, and self-produced commercial, experimental, and discursive products. |  |
Stephanie Tharp | Stephanie Tharp is an industrial designer and educator— currently an Associate Professor and an Undergraduate Program Co-Director at the University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art & Design. Her recent research surrounds the theory and practice of discursive design. One current project is a collaboration with chronic pain specialists exploring public engagement with medical research and challenging popular stigmas of pain sufferers. |  |
Jacinda Townsend | Jacinda Townsend is the author of the novels Mother Country and Saint Monkey, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. | |
Jennifer Traig | Jennifer Traig is the author of Act Natural, Well Enough Alone, and Devil in the Details and the editor of The Autobiographer's Handbook and Don't Forget to Write. She holds a PhD in English from Brandeis, and teaches in the Comprehensive Studies Program at UM. | |
Douglas Trevor | Douglas Trevor is the author of the short story collection The Book of Wonders (2017), the novel Girls I Know, which was the recipient of the 2013 Balcones Fiction Prize, and the short story collection The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space, which won the 2005 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 2006 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction. Doug's short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares Solos, The Iowa Review, The Notre Dame Review, The Minnesota Review, and New Letters. He has also had stories in The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Epoch, Black Warrior Review, The New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and more than a dozen other publications. His stories have been anthologized in— among other places-The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton, where he worked with Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison, and a PhD in Renaissance Literature from Harvard. His next novel is set in Denver and focuses on a father's addiction issues, as well as other secrets uncovered by his estranged son. | |
| Author | Biography | Book Cover(s) |
