Octopus Hunting, a mind-bending collection of new essays by Richey A. Piiparinen with illustrations by Liz Maugans in 2023. Piiparinen has crafted fourteen essays that traverse the economy of the Rust Belt and Cleveland, Ohio, from its past triumphs to its current struggles, explaining the issues confronting the region with laser wit and mounds of research. The book is also a memoir of Piiparinen's diagnosis of glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, and his subsequent treatment. The two seemingly disparate themes are so expertly knitted together that his personal experiences deepen the economic discussion, and we never forget that when we talk about the rise and fall and rise again of cities and regions we are really talking about the people who live in them.
Richey Piiparinen is the Director of Urban Theory and Analytics at the School of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. His focus is on the cultural, psychosocial, and demographic changes in Rust Belt cities, particularly as they relate to economic and community development. Richey holds a Masters of Arts in Clinical Psychology from Roosevelt University in Chicago and a Master's of Urban Planning, Design, and Development from Cleveland State University. His essays on cities have appeared in the Atlantic's City Lab, Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Cleveland Magazine, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and his research has been highlighted in various outlets, including CBS Evening News, NPR's Morning Edition, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN the Magazine. Richey is a contributing editor to New Geography, and he is co-editor of the book "Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology".
Liz Maugans received her BFA in printmaking from Kent State University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1992. Maugans' work is included in the Progressive Art Collection, The Cleveland Clinic, the Dalad Collection, BF Goodrich, the Westin Collection and The Riffe Center for Government and the Arts. She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 2000 and a 2005 Artist-in-Communities Grant. Maugans was awarded an Ohio Arts Council's International Residency to Dresden, Germany in 2009. She was honored, along with her Zygote co-founder, Bellamy Printz, the Martha Joseph Prize for Distinguished Service from the Cleveland Arts Prize in 2012. In 2013, she was awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship from Community Partnership for Arts and Culture.