This story originally ran on August 12, 2025. We are rerunning it to promote Beer's appearance at the Ann Arbor District Library's Downtown location on Thursday, November 13, at 6 pm.

You likely have heard of Alexander Hamilton, but do you know his sister-in-law, Angelica Schuyler Church?

Angelica led a wide-ranging social life, born in the United States in 1756 and spending time as an adult in England and France before returning to the U.S. In fact, a town in New York bears her name.

U-M lecturer Molly Beer wrote her new, eponymous biography, Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution, as an account of Angelica’s “web of soft-power connections that spanned the War for Independence, the post-war years of tenuous peace, and the turbulent politics and rival ideologies that threatened to tear apart the nascent United States,” according to the book jacket.

That web contained many recognizable—and male, owing to the times—names. First, there was Angelica’s father, Philip Schuyler, who was a Revolutionary War general. Alexander Hamilton married her sister, Elizabeth. The General and first U.S. President George Washington, the third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, and Dr. Benjamin Franklin, among others, were in her orbit, too.

Yet, Angelica also counted many influential female friends who were involved in the revolutionary process, in addition to her sisters. The book contains stories about these active women: Lucy Knox, Catherine Greene, Janet Montgomery, Mary Byrd, Sarah Jay (and Abbe), Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and even royalists—Lady Mary Johnson, the Haudenosaunee diplomat Molly Brant, and Baroness Riedesel. Her contacts in Europe included Maria Cosway and Marguerite de Corny, among others.

In reflecting on Angelica’s relationships and approaches, Beer writes:

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week: Griot Galaxy, Alexis C. Lamb, Moonmill, Fangs & Twangs, Alex Anest Organ Trio, deegeecee, The Boy Detective, Hemmingway Lane, 3Steez, Chris DuPont, Pat2Dope, Idle Ray, Dre Dav, and Splitfuse.

More than 25 years after starting the Ghostly International record label from his University of Michigan dorm room, Sam Valenti IV still feels the inspiration Ann Arbor provides the label, now based in Brooklyn, New York.

That includes one of its most famous small businesses, Zingerman’s Delicatessen, which Valenti describes as a good role model for young companies and one Ghostly looked to for inspiration in executing its vision as a trailblazing record label, famous for its diverse roster of electronic and experimental music and its wide range of branded merchandise.

“I think we were looking for inspiration, so to speak,” Valenti said. “[Zingerman’s is] independent, it's entrepreneurial, it's creative, it's quality-oriented, it's local. I brought the whole [Ghostly] team once to the class seminars they had and read the books.

“I love it as a framework, because it's not a lot of waste. So, we organized the company early on, kind of as these units. I'm not sure we were as successful, obviously, executing them, but it gives you something to sort of look at as like, ‘OK, most companies are just this hierarchical thing, but what if you create space, and you create safe space to do different things that self-serve the rest of the community?’”

Steeped in Ann Arbor and Southeast Michigan independent music lore, Ghostly International are commemorating the label’s story and the people who helped it grow with the release of its first hardcover book. The 488-page We'll Never Stop Living This Way: A Ghostly International Catalogue includes a visual history of the label's archives, exclusive essays by critics Michaelangelo Matos and Philip Sherburne, as well as unseen photos, original interviews, and oral histories with both musical and visual artists from across the roster.

Across from Pierce Lake in Chelsea, tucked down a short road off Old U.S. Highway 12, is an art gallery that's known primarily to the people who live right next to it.

But the high-quality exhibitions it stages six times a year deserve the same sort of audiences that attend more forward-facing public galleries and museums in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

Gallery 100, located inside the Silver Maples of Chelsea retirement community, just opened its final exhibition of the year: Colorful Explorations, which runs from November 5 to January 5, and "invites visitors to experience the power of color, form, and imagination, offering a chance to engage with art that inspires reflection, emotion, and connection." It features works by artists Gwyn McKay, Chris Huang, Susan Clinthorne, Ashley Menth, Bill Knudstrup, Keto Green, and Lulu Fall.

Led by Silver Maples resident Lois DeLeon and Winn Nichols, the retirement community's director of life enrichment, Gallery 100 highlights Michigan artists. It started as a simple idea in 2009 by Glen Paulsen, former president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, who lived at Silver Maples until his passing in 2012. DeLeon took the idea and ran with it, bringing on Nichols in 2021.

Since then, the dynamic duo has built up Gallery 100's social media presence and marketing, acquired small grants to improve the unassuming space—a long hallway—and continued to book forward-looking exhibits, including hosting the Prison Creative Arts Project twice.

With Colorful Explorations now open, we caught up with Nichols to discuss Gallery 100, one of the more uniquely located third-space galleries in Washtenaw County.

"Write what you know" is a standard prompt for authors, but Barbara Stark-Nemon really does know what she pens. The Michigan writer, who splits time between Ann Arbor and Northport, is a fiber-arts creator. Stark-Nemon's third novel, Isabela’s Way, follows the story of a 14-year-old Jewish girl escaping Portugal's Inquisition in the 17th century, and Isabela uses her embroidery skills to create coded symbols on banners that hang over doorways, offering fellow escapees information about safe houses. The book is part coming-of-age story, part historical fiction, and full of suspense.

Simon and Schuster, which distributes this She Writes Press book, describes Isabela’s Way:

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week: Kozora Quartet, T. Greens, Otherseas, Kylee Phillips, My Salamander, Manifest Zone, The Night Assembly, Brynn Hilliker, Atlas the Kid, and new music from the Intensity Recordings and AGN7 labels.

Singer and educator Willis Charles Patterson, who spent more than 30 years as a faculty member and associate dean at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD), died on October 22. He was 94.

The Ann Arbor native, born November 27, 1930, was also a graduate of U-M, earning his undergraduate and master's degrees at the university before being hired by SMTD in fall 1968.

Patterson was the first Black faculty member hired by SMTD, and in a 2019 profile of the bass singer, Erin Lichtenstein wrote that the educator "did more to advance the cause of racial equity at SMTD than anyone else in its history, before or since."

The Ann Arbor District Library’s Fifth Avenue Press imprint is launching five new publications by local authors across several genres during a Sunday, November 9, book-release reception at the Downtown location as part of A2 Community Bookfest.

The Fifth Avenue Press reception, which is at 1 pm, will include author readings and meet-and-greets along with opportunities to purchase books and get them signed by the authors.

Started in 2017, Fifth Avenue Press assists local authors with creating print-ready books at no cost and ensures they retain all of their rights.

As part of that partnership, the library distributes ebooks of the authors’ works to patrons without paying royalties. The authors can also sell their books in various formats and keep all of the proceeds.

We recently sent a questionnaire to the authors to learn more about their books and creative processes ahead of the November 9 reception. You can click the book titles below to take you to the author interviews:

The best portrait photographers get to know their subjects and capture not just their images but also their auras.

Joseph Ferraro does that, too, but for bugs.

Closer: A look at the tiny world around us exhibition at Matthaei Botanical Gardens showcases Ferraro's macro photographs of his favorite subjects, highlighting the immense natural beauty of the many small things all around us.

"To me, the little things matter," Ferraro writes in his artist's statement for Closer:

Loneliness and responsibility devastate the older sister, Mirae. Grief and a magical power motivate the younger sister, Soojin. The combination is nothing less than miraculous and destructive.

And the River Drags Her Down, the new young adult horror novel by Ann Arbor's Jihyun Yun, retells a Korean folktale in a fictional coastal resort town called Jade Acre. Water and all its possibilities will never seem the same after reading it.

The Han sisters possess a unique gift. They can bring back dead creatures by following a protocol with the body. The girls discover their powers early on by mistake, and their mother guides them. Later, one of them deliberately and against advice uses her ability for her own objective.

When Mirae drowns unexpectedly after their mother had already also died suddenly, Soojin is bereft. The loss of her sister is compounded by the loss of her mother, so that Soojin “felt wounded by everything beautiful her sister was not alive to see.” In an attempt to seem fine, Soojin makes up stories about having lots of friends for her father, whom she thinks falls for it, but does not believe her for a second.

Throughout it all, “Soojin was sovereign of the nation of never letting go.” She misses her sister too much to see clearly. Her subsequent actions illustrate what her friend Mark Moon’s mother says: “Not letting go is the only prerequisite of a haunting. Our harms never leave us if we don’t let them leave.”

So Soojin does not stop to question whether she should when she has the chance to bring Mirae back to life. The small physical remnant of her sister that Soojin finds quickly grows into a revenant form of Mirae. This Mirae returns with perfect skin, does not seem to bleed with real blood, and unbeknownst to Soojin, gains powers with water. All those warning signs are invisible to the ecstatic Soojin, who feels entirely thrilled to have her sister back. During a belated celebration of Mirae’s 18th birthday, the sisters are “euphoric and drunk on the fact of being alive.”

The issues start piling up and cannot be ignored, though. Mark notices first. At that same impromptu birthday party with the two sisters, he already sees cracks in the perfect front: