August 2026 Contributors

Dave Algase has reported on more than 400 local businesses since returning to community journalism in 2022 after a hiatus of twenty-eight years. The Kenyon College alumnus is also an independent information professional, a Jeopardy! champion, a devoted dad, and a fan of the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Browns.

Ally Choi grew up in San Francisco, but now calls Ann Arbor her second home. Korean-American identity, art, pop culture, family, faith, and grief are recurring threads in her writing. She is a recipient of a Hopwood and the U-M Residential College’s Emerging Writers Award. When she’s not writing for the Observer, you can find her making cheese, wading through the cascades, or supporting young writers throughout 826michigan’s Yspilanti and Ann Arbor programs. You can also find her work on Best of Korea and reach her on LinkedIn!

Annie Comperchio is an artist and photographer who lives in Leelanau County and coaches seasonally for Ann Arbor Rowing Club. Annie has been working as a photographer for 20 years, specializing in portraiture. She formerly put down roots in the agricultural side of food systems in Leelanau, growing produce for local chefs. During the summer months, you’ll find her on the Huron River alongside rowers. You can see her work at anniecomperchio.com or on Instagram @a.comperchio

Cam Finch is the founder of PoetTreeTown, a community poetry-in-public project in Washtenaw County. They are a manuscript editor, as well as a poet and prose writer, with a focus on ecology, queerness, the body, illness, language, liberation, as well as the surreal, the grotesque, and the liminal. Cam’s writing aligns with their dedication to community building, collective care, and mutual aid. Teaching generative and free writing workshops in community spaces is a way for them to share their passion for writing, learning, and art-making with others. They crave collaboration and gatherings of people for a more just and liberated world; it’s what fuels Cam daily. Visit Cam’s website at ccfinch.com or follow PoetTreeTown on Instagram at @PoetTreeTown_A2.

Jay Forstner created The Fake Ad more than 30 years ago while he was a staff writer at the Observer. He is the author of The Fake Ad Book and the upcoming children’s picture book, “Jimmy Gerken: A Friend to All.” He has a brilliant wife and three extraordinary grown children, but his proudest moment was the day he fixed a microwave oven.

Steve Friess is a veteran freelance journalist whose work appears regularly in The New York Times, Time, and many others (including the Observer). Friess was a 2011–12 Knight-Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan.

Lauren Houser is a cartoonist from southeast Michigan, who loves exploring interpersonal relationships with her characters, writing collaborations with her friends, and showing the beauty of the natural world in her comics. When not drawing, she’s desperately trying not to fall asleep again, thinking of the next ridiculous scenario with her characters to share with her friends, and looking for nearby cats to dote upon.

Vania McAllister lives in Ann Arbor with her family. Having grown up in San Jose, California, she is a lifelong San Francisco 49er Faithful, and loves watching the Detroit Tigers with her husband. She also enjoys cooking and crocheting. She loves writing about food, culture and people, and particularly finds joy in sharing stories about the Filipino diaspora, and Filipino-American experiences. You can follow her food adventures on Instagram @thechowchaser. 

Timothy Monger is a musician and writer living in Ypsilanti, Michigan. His music ranges in style from pastoral folk and chamber pop to harmony-driven indie rock. In addition to his work as a solo singer/songwriter, he is the bandleader of Timothy Monger State Park, cofounder of folk-rock cult heroes Great Lakes Myth Society, and curator of the experimental multimedia project Log Variations. He is also a freelance graphic designer, habitual runner, and intermittent birder.
As a pup, he worked at local record stores like Schoolkids’ and Encore, where hipster elders taught him about the Shaggs, Scott Walker, and Fairport Convention. A subsequent career writing about music was inevitable. As a Senior Content Editor at Xperi, Monger’s work can be read at AllMusic, Apple Music, Spotify, and other notable industry outlets. He also authors the blog (and Substack) Is This Something?, which compresses observations about creativity, work, and neighborhood minutiae into digestible weekly servings. His home on the internet is timothymonger.com.

Davi Napoleon is a theater historian and freelance writer. Although she specializes in the arts, she has written about a variety of subjects for local and national magazines and loves diving in and learning new things. She grew up in New York City and came to Ann Arbor to study at U-M. After doing her doctorate at NYU, she returned to the town she missed. She’s lived here for over 45 years and has contributed to the Observer for almost that long. You can read more about her here.

Rhonda Palmer retired after fifty years in nursing (most of that in hospice). Now she writes and paints and works at community building.

Onna Solomon is a writer, social worker, and library enthusiast. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Disorder and her writing has appeared in a range of publications such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Dunes Review, Hobart, The Hopkins Review, and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, among others.  In her spare time, she thinks up ways to gather people together through Stubborn Joy Society, a (somewhat imaginary) collective committed to joy as an act of survival. She lives in the Old West Side of Ann Arbor.

Bree Stilwell grew up in the sister cities of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. After spending fifteen of her post-college years in Chicago, Las Vegas and Northern California, she finally relented and returned to the city that at some point calls us all back… if we ever left.
During that time and since, she’s studied poetry in Prague, worn every possible hat in the Napa Valley wine industry, rehabbed a brewery loft in Detroit’s Eastern Market, and was the project manager for the restoration of The Dixboro Project.
She’s a creative entrepreneurship mentor by day, and the author of Caravan by night—a Substack newsletter about culture, art-making and the evolving human experience. Bree lives with her husband, son, stepsons on the northwest side, and can be found at just about any AADL event, nursing her oat flat while working remotely at Dozer, or enjoying all four glorious seasons on the B2B Trail.
You can read more at breestilwell.com or drop her a line at [email protected].

John Tebeau started drawing as a kid in Muskegon and hasn’t stopped yet. Heavily influenced by Mad magazine, Wacky Packs, and R. Crumb, he copublished an alt-comics monthly paper in Chicago, designed and printed thousands of T-shirts in an old factory, and showed his original art and prints in Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, and New York. He wrote and illustrated the book Bars, Taverns, and Dives New Yorkers Love (Rizzoli), and after 20 years in NYC, he now lives the good life in Ann Arbor with his wife, The Lovely Colleen. See more of his work at tebeau.com, follow him on socials @johntebeau, or drop him a line at [email protected].