November 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.

Shelley Daily is a freelance writer who’s lived with her family on Ann Arbor’s west side for twenty-five years. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, she’s fallen in love with Ann Arbor and its people, and especially enjoys writing profiles for the Observer. A favorite day for her is a hike at the Arb, a visit to the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and a bite to eat in a window seat at Old Town Tavern. You can find her work at writingbyshelley.com and you can reach her at [email protected].

Della DiPietro discovered a love for writing in a U-M freshman English class with an essay that led to a Hopwood award. She wrote for the Michigan Daily and went on to an award-winning career in TV journalism. Another passion is effective governance and she has served in local elected positions for nearly 30 years. She and her husband Gary enjoy kayaking the Huron from their backyard and running on the border-to-border trail.

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 thirty 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.

Erica Hobbs is a freelance journalist specializing in arts, culture and travel. In addition to the Ann Arbor Observer, she is a regular arts contributor to the Detroit News and a theater critic for Midbrow Detroit. Her work has also appeared in Business Insider, Reuters, AAA, Fodor’s Travel, DAC Magazine, WDET and with the Solutions Journalism Network, among others.
She is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers and holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Italian from the University of Michigan. Passionate about theater, she spends much of her free time attending or performing in shows. She’s also an avid traveler, whose travels include living in Italy, England, and Malaysia and spending a year solo backpacking throughout Asia.

Jenn McKee spent more than a decade working as a staff arts reporter/critic at the Ann Arbor News (in its various iterations). Since then, she’s published pieces in the Washington Post, AARP, Good Housekeeping, Shondaland, Well+Good, the Writer, American Theatre, Scary Mommy, the Detroit Free Press, Hour Detroit, and more. Jenn met her longtime Ann Arborite husband, Joe Grekin, while playing trombone in the Michigan Marching Band and earning her degree from U-M’s Residential College; she then went on to earn an MA in English (UGA) and an MFA in Creative Writing (PSU). These days, Jenn has two teenage daughters, regularly contributes book reviews to the online mag Midbrow, and works part-time as an event planner and used books curator for Road Less Traveled Books in Farmington.

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.

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].