Carol Spindel taught nonfiction writing for twenty-five years at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her first book about Ivory Coast, In the Shadow of the Sacred Grove, is a memoir of living in a northern farm community. It has been widely taught in African studies, geography, anthropology, and global studies classes, as well as read by study and service abroad program participants. Its sympathetic portrayal of one multi-ethnic community gives readers an intimate view of rural life in northern Ivory Coast. A sequel entitled I Give You Half the Road, which tells the turbulent recent history of Ivory Coast through the lives of five young northerners who leave their rural home for cities, was published by University of Wisconsin Press in January 2012. She has also written about the controversy over mascots and team names based on stereotyped American Indians in Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy Over American Indian Mascots (NYU Press), and worked as an ally and activist with organizations to retire these stereotypes, including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media. She currently works as an ACLU activist and teaches nonfiction writing workshops at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. carolspindel.com