BEN CONNOR BARRIE, editor-in-chief/publisher: Ben has returned to his native Ann Arbor for grad school. He studies forest ecology at U of M's School of Natural Resources and Environment. He knows all the trees and his favorite spice is cardamom.
DANA NO LAST NAME, feature writer:
Dana can point to the majority of Michigan cities on her hand. She has lived towards the top of her right ring finger and spent most of her life in her palm, close to her thumb before moving to the mound of her thumb, roughly where Ann Arbor is. It's a better visual than it is a written explanation. Her favorite kinds of writings are haikus and craigslist missed connections, some of which she will post about. She spent the better part of the past ten years in some form of art school where she made ugly art about horrible things. She is very insecure about her comma usage.
LIZZY COURTOIS, music editor: Lizzy is another native Ann Arborite who has recently returned to Southeast Michigan after spending several years kicking it in San Francisco's Mission District.
QUINN DAVIS, feature writer: came out of Kalamazoo College with a BA in psychology and the best friends a gal could ask for. She decided to cash in on what she spent those four years getting (her friends), followed fellow Damn Arborites Erika Jost and Joshua Stoolman to the land of maize and blue, and the rest is history.
Except this: Quinn works at JSTOR, writes for Adios Barbie and interns for "The Illusionists." She was the editor for The Washtenaw Voice and is eyeing the idea of becoming a forever Ann Arbor citizen very, very carefully. She also is a certified Zumba instructor, which is hilarious. She misses dance, her friends and family outside of A2 and her hometown, Traverse City.
G.S. HANS, editor emeritus: is a graduate student at U of M. Having fled Michigan at the age of 17, he begrudgingly returned to Michigan for school six years later and was pleasantly surprised to learn that prices were about 70% of New York levels. Advantage: Midwest.
BENJAMIN HOUSTON, senior legal counsel: studies environmental law at the University of Michigan, where he’s worked on cases involving some of the most pressing issues confronting the Great Lakes today - and he doesn’t do much else.
Grasping for characteristics to fashion something akin to personality, he is also a banjoist, a moderately avid collector of vintage LPs, and occasionally thinks about running a marathon. If anyone has any other bright ideas, someone please let him know. Please.
ERIKA JOST, Detroit bureau chief: is an Ann Arbor refugee. Since her law school years, she has been sampling city life in southeast Michigan. Namely, she clerked for a judge in Flint for a year before returning to her old stomping grounds. She has moved back in with her parents in Grosse Pointe and is working for a firm in downtown Detroit.
She's slipping back into life on the eastside, where you get caught up in the crowded highways of metro Detroit, and wonder, only vaguely, about the goings-on in that strange satellite orbiting our bloated, sprawling city. Is there a place outside the tri-counties? It seemed so unreal, without gravity, cool and bright and quiet and calm. There were no problems there, or maybe there just wasn't any air.
She visits the moon on the weekend.
She's slipping back into life on the eastside, where you get caught up in the crowded highways of metro Detroit, and wonder, only vaguely, about the goings-on in that strange satellite orbiting our bloated, sprawling city. Is there a place outside the tri-counties? It seemed so unreal, without gravity, cool and bright and quiet and calm. There were no problems there, or maybe there just wasn't any air.
She visits the moon on the weekend.
JOSHUA STOOLMAN, sports editor: studies Immunology in the University of Michigan Program in Biomedical Science. He’s yet another Ann Arbor native who just couldn’t resist returning to the homeland. A love for the hometown team played more than a marginal role in his decision to come back to U of M for graduate school (along with a great graduate program). College sport fanaticism can be a full time hobby; however, issues pertaining to medical research and the current state of Ann Arbor (and the whole of southeastern Michigan) pique his interest.
