Authors Next Door: Anne-Marie Oomen and Linda Nemec Foster 

Mermaids don’t exist. It’s a dull, disheartening truth that we all probably accepted in childhood, despite Disney’s best efforts. But whatif they did? Seated next to each other at a reading of Alison Swan’s Fresh Water anthology more than a decade ago, local authors Anne-Marie Oomen and Linda Nemec Foster found themselves asking this very question. Ten-odd years, countless emails, and one fateful […]

Author Next Door Cari Noga

By Anna Faller Northern Michigan, and Grand Traverse County, in particular, is a place, but even more significantly, an attitude – a way of life, even – that’s unlike any other. Locals know it, tourists sense it, and the rest of the country only hears about it. This “local flavor,” so to speak, is what […]

Author Next Door Roger Hardnock Interview

By Anna Faller You might say that Roger Hardnock is a man of many talents. You might, and he is, but to leave it at that would be a substantial understatement. On the contrary, Hardnock is truly a jack-of-all-trades. As a bright and shiny college grad, he first entered the workforce through Detroit’s infamous auto […]

Author Next Door Tim Rappleye

By Paul Oh Meet Tim Rappleye, the author of the recently published Jack Parker’s Wiseguys: The National Champion BU Terriers, the Blizzard of ’78, and the Miracle on Ice. Mr. Rappleye’s love of hockey has driven much of his career spanning his work in the fields of journalism, television production, blogging, and more. He’s covered […]

Local Author Reveals the Inner Beauty of the Ignored and Uncommon

By Paul Oh Beyond the obvious and bountiful beauty of northern Michigan, you’re likely to step on or over or under elements of nature you might think you’re better off without. Maybe that lamprey had latched onto and marred what would otherwise be an award-winning fish or that bad case of swimmer’s itch that arrived […]

Meet January's Author Next Door: Jay Harrington

If fairies were to live anywhere, they would live along a stretch of the Cedar Cathedral Trail in the Grand Traverse Commons, called the Fairy Trails Project. Along these paths, tiny houses made of pine cones, shells, and rocks invite woodland fairies to inhabit their own little corners of Traverse City. The Fairy Trails Project […]

Meet December's Author Next Door: Michael Taillard

By Anna Faller December, 2017 Prolific author, Michael Taillard, was not always a writer — at least, not by trade. Taillard actually began college as a tuba performance major and part-time body piercer, but after taking his first economics course, he says, “everything just kind of clicked.” Taillard was initially drawn to economics by the […]

NWS Author Next Door: Marina Nieman Call

Author Next Door: Marina Nieman Call November 2017 Marina Call is a freelance writer currently working on her second novel. Originally from southern California, she received her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in History of Art and Architecture.  She continued her studies in Rome where she completed her Global MBA from St. […]

Meet Author Next Door: Jennifer Weil

Jennifer C. Weil says it might seem a cliché, but she sees the ordinary in the extraordinary and the extraordinary in the ordinary. “It’s an implicit relationship. It might even be necessary for happiness,” said Weil, who recently published Coral Tree: A Costa Rican Canon, a set of short stories inspired by time she and her husband have spent in Costa Rica over […]

NWS Author Next Door: Bob Downes

NWS Author Next Door September 2017 Robert “Bob” Downes is known to many readers in northern Michigan as the co-founder and former editor of Northern Express Weekly, which he and his partner, George Foster, established in 1991. The partners sold the Express in 2013 and, with no plans for what to do with the rest of […]