Authors

Michele DeMarco & Andrew Simboli

Author

Michele DeMarco


Michele is an award-winning writer and a professionally trained therapist, ethicist, minister, and educator specializing in moral injury.

A native Bostonian, Michele holds master’s degrees in World Religion and Ethics, Comparative Culture and Conflict, and Psychology, via a consortium comprising Harvard University, Boston College, and Boston University, and professional certificates in Conflict Transformation and Mediation, respectively. She also studied Marriage and Family therapy at Antioch University and has done further academic coursework in creative writing, criminal justice, and law. She is currently finishing her PhD in Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies; her research is on moral injury.

Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Daily News, Medium, The Ascent, and The Basement Series publications, Partners HealthCare journal, Living Well magazine, and Be Well and Life Without Baby blogs. Her non-fiction books include Stirred Not Shaken, I’m Okay…Right Now…Really, and Spirit Wellness. Her upcoming novel, About Others, won the national Mystery Writers of America’s Helen McCloy Award for Mystery Writing. In the Black Hours brings to bear a decade of clinical work and research in trauma, specifically moral injury.

Michele also works helping individuals, families, and groups to navigate change, transform conflict, and rebuild lives in the wake of crisis or moral injury. She speaks on the subjects of trauma and transition, resilience and wellness, and teaches conflict transformation and creative nonfiction at California Institute of Integral Studies.


Photographer

Andrew Simboli


Andrew is an award-winning photographer, specializing in fine art, long-exposure, landscape, and night photography.

His work has been exhibited on both the east and west coasts of the United States, and featured in multimedia publications for the travel/wilderness, adventure/sport, and academic industries. He has also done corporate photography for Macy’s, Fox Media, Shell, and Women’s Wear Daily. His image “Bay Bridge Dusk” won the 2019 National Silver Award for photography and design by UPCEA.

A fourth-generation artist, Andrew’s passion for photography began with an antique manual film camera and darkroom work at age 12.  Since then, it has taken him deep into the rugged canyons of Mexico on motorcycle, through snow-covered mountains and mythic fog in Patagonia, across steep and craggy shorelines of coastal California, and into the parched deserts and colored canyons of America’s southwest. Andrew’s photos concentrate on the interaction of the timely and the timeless, the perceptible and the mysterious, always seeking out an eternal truth in an ephemeral moment.

Andrew’s passion for photography is matched only by his love of the outdoors. He has been an avid backpacker for more than 30 years; most recently he completed an early season ascent of Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States. He is also an avid skier, scuba diver, mountain biker, and motorcyclist.

Andrew and Michele live in the San Francisco Bay Area.


Contact the authors

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