Book Authors Archive

Isabella La Rocca González

July 23, 2024

Isabella La Rocca González is an artist and activist based in the United States. Her work is part of a long tradition in art and photography: to bring to light and find beauty in the disregarded, hidden, or unconscious. As a first-generation American, she strives to reconcile values from her Indigenous Mexican roots with her European heritage. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, including a solo show at the Center for Photography in Woodstock, NY. Her creative nonfiction works have been published in various venues, including the Women Eco Artist Dialog Magazine and the Everything from Nothing Journal. Her screenplay, Fugue 9, was chosen as a finalist for the 2008 Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. She received her BA in fine arts from the University of Pennsylvania, and her MFA in Photography from Indiana University. After thirty years teaching art and photography on the post-secondary level, she has left academia to devote herself full time to her art practice and to growing a native pollinator garden.

Jess Bugg

July 23, 2024

Jess Bugg is a writer and artist based in Austin, TX. She blends her passion for ecology and animal rights with a love of storytelling. Bugg received her BA in visual communication from the Savannah College of Art and Design with concentrations in photography and writing. She received her MA in nature-culture-sustainability studies from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is trained in classical Pilates and teaches with a focus on chronic illness and rehabilitation.

Liz Tyson

May 14, 2024

Dr. Liz Tyson is Born Free USA’s Programs Director. She has helped animals across the globe. She helped to establish the very first locally run sterilization program for street dogs in the Middle East, worked with indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon to end the hunting of wild primates, ran a UK charity campaigning to end the exploitation of animals in circuses and zoos, and helped design a new rehabilitation complex for rescued monkeys at Ensessa Kotteh, Born Free’s sanctuary in Ethiopia. In 2018, she earned her doctorate in animal welfare law.
In 2020, Liz published Licensing Laws and Animal Welfare: The Legal Protection of Wild Animals with Palgrave MacMillan/Springer Nature. The book outlines the findings of her doctoral research, which is the most comprehensive study of the legal protection of wild animals in English zoos carried out to date.
Liz splits her time between campaigning for wild animal freedom and overseeing the running of the Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary in south Texas. She lives in San Marcos, TX, with her daughter, Anna Patricia, and her two rescued dogs: Maya and Stanley Millett.

Ruth Montiel Arias

May 14, 2024

Ruth Montiel Arias graduated in Applied Arts from the Pablo Picasso Higher School of Arts in A Coruña, she completed the Master of Photography EFTI International Center for Photography and Film in Madrid.
Her projects investigate the human relationship with natural territory, and its derived conflicts of domination and animal, social, and environmental oppression. In 2020, she published Bestiae, a photo book about hunting, and in 2021, she published El 2%, an artist book about the relationship between humans and monkeys.
Her photographs have been shown and published in a variety of media in Spain. Her work has also been exhibited in cultural institutions such as the Cultural Center of Spain in Lima, Landkreis Galerie in Germany, Museum of Memory in Argentina, BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance) in New York, Casa Encendida, National Calcografía, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Conde Duque Cultural Center, and Matadero in Madrid, Cristina Enea Foundation in Donostia, Las Cigarreras in Alicante and Cidade da Cultura in Santiago de Compostela. She has also exhibited in galleries in Madrid, Shanghai, and Buenos Aires.
www.ruthmontielarias.com

Katherine Carver

May 14, 2024

Katherine Carver was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1978. She was introduced to photography during high school. In 2011, she found herself behind a camera lens creating photographs of her first dog, a rescue Shetland Sheepdog named Biscuit, who inspired Carver’s great passion, interest, curiosity, and the study of dogs in her work.
Abandoned: Chronicling the Journeys of Once-Forsaken Dogs is Carver’s debut book, though her photographs have been published in international publications such as, L’Oeil de la Photographie, Four&Sons, and My Modern Met. Carver holds a Juris Doctor, with Honor, from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She currently lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband, daughter, and rescue Shetland Sheepdog, Victory. To learn more, visit: www.katherinecarver.com and www.biscuitsspace.com.

Pei Feng Su

March 4, 2024

Pei Feng Su founded ACTAsia, a charitable organization, in 2006 to promote kindness and compassion through educational initiatives in Asia. Her background was one of hardships: the deaths of her parents, grandmother, and other close family members by the time she was only 16, had a significant impact on her thinking and behavior, taking her on a path of self-destruction. Eventually, mainly through studying Buddhism and the influence of her Buddhist friends, she overcame many challenges and decided to travel to the UK, where she successfully completed an MA in Sociology Policy. On completing her studies, she found employment with the World Society for the Protection of Animals as Director for Member Societies, leaving after 5 years to establish ACTAsia. Pei is an international presenter at conferences and in the media, a visiting lecturer at the University of London College of Fashion and Suzhou University, in Shanghai.

Emma Hakansson

January 22, 2024

Emma Hakansson is a dedicated advocate working to upheave oppression facing our fellow animals, children, women. and working people. As the author of How Veganism Can Save Us, Hakansson has lectured internationally on ethics and sustainability, and her work and words have been featured in The Guardian, Forbes, Earth Island Journal, Sentient Media, and many other publications.

Debra Maria Flint

January 22, 2024

Debra Maria Flint was born in Birmingham, UK, to an agnostic family. She converted to Catholicism at twenty-two years of age in the wake of Vatican II. She lived in Greece from her late teenage years into her early twenties and speaks and writes fluent Greek.
On her return to the UK, Debra studied theology as a mature student in Oxford. She met her late husband, Bill, at that time. They moved to Somerset after their marriage. Debra later went on to qualify as a nurse. She also obtained a bachelor of science in health, with safe-guarding children and adults as her specialism. She has postgraduate qualifications in management and investigative research.
Debra spent over twenty years safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. She managed both children’s homes and care homes and later went on to work as a social care inspector for Ofsted. She was the first Ofsted social care inspector in England to represent Ofsted in court when a company failed to have robust safeguarding practices in place. Ofsted eventually won the case.
Debra was married for twenty-nine years. Her late husband died in 2014, and she decided to follow a consecrated path within the Catholic Church. She spent six years exploring the new and restored forms of consecrated life before experiencing difficulties in 2020.
Debra’s first book, Look Back to the Future: Consecrated Women in Britain 597 AD to Date, was published in April 2021. No Place for a Woman: The Spiritual and Political Power Abuse of Women within Catholicism is her second book. Since writing this book, Debra has sadly found it necessary to leave the Roman Catholic Church and is now serving as an ordained deacon within another Christian denomination which has apostolic succession through the Old Catholic Church. Debra still considers herself to be part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

William Crain

January 22, 2024

William “Bill” Crain is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at The City College of New York. In 2008, he and his wife Ellen founded Safe Haven Farm Sanctuary in Poughquag, NY. The sanctuary provides a lifelong home to farmed animals rescued from slaughter and abandonment. Bill is the author of a major textbook in developmental psychology and other books and articles. In 2018, he received a PETA Hero to Animals Award for his efforts to protect black bears.

Jeff Thomas

October 26, 2023

Jeff Thomas has longtime professional experience in the farm animal movement and political campaigns. He is also the author of two classic books on modern Virginia politics. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Public Policy in his hometown of Richmond. Mr. Thomas received his master’s degree from the Tulane University School of Public Health and his undergraduate degree from the Duke University School of Engineering. In his free time, he enjoys filing Freedom of Information Act requests and petting sweet little pups. He welcomes all communications with readers at jeffthomasrva@gmail.com.