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:

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.

"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 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:

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:

The fear before, during, and after immigration raids distresses both the immigrants who are directly affected and the networks of people who provide support to immigrants.

That is why it is a matter of public health and why William D. Lopez, a public health professor at the University of Michigan, studies immigration.

“The net of deportation pulls in so many more people who didn’t expect to find themselves pulled into the mass deportation campaign or machine,” Lopez told Pulp.

Lopez has now written two books on the topic of immigration. His first book, Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, focuses on one raid by ICE, SWAT, and local police in Washtenaw County and what happened afterward. In Lopez’s words, “That book was not so much on the people who were deported but on the families who are left behind and, by extension, the communities in which those families live.”

Lopez’s latest book, Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance, was published in September and is broader in scope, with stories of six worksite raids in 2018. However, according to Lopez, little is known about such raids, an issue that drives Lopez’s research.

“When things are not defined, they’re harder to study, understand, and resist or oppose,” he said. “We describe our work as research advocacy.”

A round-up of recent books from authors with Washtenaw County connections, past and present. We've also highlighted Ann Arbor-area readings and signings when available.

Hardcore fans of graphic artists will no doubt know the works of Caroline Cash, Lisa Hanawalt, and Julia Wertz.

Cash has won Eisner and Ignatz Awards—the industry's highest honors—for her ongoing series PeePee-PooPoo. Hanawalt has published four books for Drawn & Quarterly, and Wertz's Tenements, Towers & Trash won the 2018 Brendan Gill Prize, an annual award for a work that best captures the spirit and energy of New York City.

These three are the special guests at this year's A2CAF: Small + Indie Press on Saturday, October 11, at the Ann Arbor District Library's Downtown location. The event runs 11 am to 5 pm and features vendors, workshops, talks, and book signings.

But even if these artists' names don't ring a bell for you, there's a chance you know their work—or will know it—through mediums outside of graphic novels:

Jay Platt thought he'd be an engineer. The boat lover moved to Ann Arbor in 1963 from Alexandria, Virginia, to study naval architecture at the University of Michigan.

But a different career called out to him after he visited a bookstore in New York City:

"I had always been interested in older things, for one thing, and books—I wouldn't say I was a collector, but I would make a point of getting an earlier edition," Platt told Elizabeth Smith and Amy Cantu in an episode of AADL Talks To that was published March 30, 2024. "Then in early, I think, '71, I believe it was, I was in New York City with a good friend of mine, and he was into book collecting. We visited some bookshops ... but one we went into and he asked for this book by—I forgot what the title was—but the book dealer went way up in, knew right where it was. I said, 'How did he know that? There are thousands of books here,' and now I know, because you know your stock. You have to, and that's what got me started."

Platt worked for a couple of bookstores in Ann Arbor before launching his own business here in 1975: West Side Book Shop at 113 West Liberty Street. He and his partner at the time held an opening party on September 21, 1975, at the store, which is located on the street level of the John Haarer Building, which was built in 1888.

Fifty years later, West Side Book Shop is still going strong inside the Haarer Building.

Octaves by Tyler Dunston moves through a world where “As always / uncertainty is ours.” 

These poems bring in earthly realities like death and the dullness of the noon hour while also reaching more broadly to the skies in which “the moon and stars wilted / through layers of floor-to-ceiling glass.” The realms collide or overlap. A tangible structure interacts with the sun when “I looked outside / at a slab of brick buttered with light.”

The poet’s perspective is clear in the appearances of the first person “I” across the poems, as the poem called “On W.G. Sebald’s natural history of the herring” declares that “I always thought death was ashen gray.” First person plural expands the outlook to involve the reader through meditating “On emptiness” with the lines, “We understand the weight of ladled things, / time maybe most of all, easy to waste / and hard to throw away.”

In Dunston’s poems, his visual art background shows through because the poet is never only fixed on his own experience but rather takes in the full scene and notices the details. The whole time, “I’m feeling my way / in the dark toward you, the sea in my ear.”

Dunston is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan. He previously earned his MFA in poetry from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University. Octaves was also a finalist for the Moonstone Press Chapbook Contest, and as the title suggests, many of the poems contain eight lines. 

Fellow poet Jason Barry joins Dunston in conversation to celebrate the release of Octaves at Literati Bookstore on Tuesday, September 23, at 6:30 pm.

Dunston and I spoke about Octaves, visual art, his PhD studies, what he's reading, and what he's working on next.