Author Profiles
Ohio has a rich literary heritage as well as some wonderful contemporary authors. Learn more about them here! You can sort by various categories and see who has participated in our annual book festival by using the category search on the left, or search by keyword (including partial author names) by using the search field on the right.
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- You are searching for the keyword(s): David Matthews, David, Matthews
David Pepper
David Rohr
Born and raised in Ohio, David Rohr spent his working career in the state until the
age of 29. Even though he’s been a resident of other states since then—New York and
Tennessee—David remains a frequent Buckeye State visitor, as most of his immediate
family still resides there. He is an enthusiastic fan of Ohio State Buckeye football as
well as of many other Ohio college and professional sports teams.
His advertising and marketing communications career includes writing, creative
direction, and management for a number of advertising agencies and
communications firms. He has served clients ranging from those on the Fortune 500
to smaller companies and human services organizations. This career, as David likes to
point out, enabled him to write everything from rap songs about pastries to fulllength
books promoting multi-million dollar printing equipment. He is also an
entrepreneur, teacher, and father of three.
David is a proud graduate of Ottawa Hills High School (Toledo). In addition, he has a
B.S. in Journalism from Bowling Green State University, an M.S. in Management and
an M.A. in Liberal Studies, both from Nazareth College of Rochester plus a graduate
certificate from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
David Wanczyk
I am a nonfiction writer (Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind) and literary journal editor (New Ohio Review), and I have taught English at Ohio University for the last 13 years. After studying at Holy Cross, I got my Masters in Poetry and Ph.D. in Creative Nonfiction at OU in Athens, where I continue to live with my wife Megan, my daughter, Natalie, my son, Benjamin, and the family heirloom—an autographed Pedro Martinez hat.
I’ve published somewhat widely, with poems in a dozen journals and essays in another half-dozen, and a couple scholarly articles about British fiction. In 2009, I began writing about unorthodox sports, which led to pieces in Salon, Slate, and theclassical.org, and eventually brought me in contact with Beep Baseball, or baseball for the blind.
In 2012, I watched my first Beep Baseball game, and I have followed the National Beep Baseball Association consistently ever since, reporting on the annual World Series and on the ups and downs of blind ballplayers for the Boston Globe Magazine, Texas Monthly, and Hobart. Some of the players came to call me “Book Dave,” and I’m happy to have that book, after quite a few years of revision, forthcoming from Ohio University’s Swallow Press.
Growing up in Western Massachusetts, I was a natural and diehard Red Sox fan, and I fancied myself a great young prospect. One Saturday morning, though, I gave up 27 runs in an inning, and (very slowly) I came to recognize that my future in sports was going to depend on a pen rather than a bat. While following Beep Baseball, I found that what I’m really interested in is the underdog story, and the search for unexpected, uncanny glory. While I covered those topics—once speaking about them on Taiwanese radio—I eventually realized that my obsessive interest in the sport was a way for me to think about the rigors of young parenthood, too, and about the role impracticality can play, and maybe needs to play, in my life.
Through my interviews with approximately 100 participants, and my travels to three countries to meet Beep Ballers, I developed a rapport with the players and sought only to tell an engaging story about them that refused to pigeonhole or patronize.
Joe David Bellamy
Born on December 29, 1941, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Joe David Bellamy was the son of Orin Ross and Beulah Pearl (Zutavern) Bellamy. He attended Duke University, 1959-1961; he received a BA in Literature from Antioch College in 1964 and received an MFA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1969. Bellamy married Connie Sue Arendsee in 1964. Professor, writer and poet, Bellamy taught at several colleges and universities, including the University of Iowa, Virginia Wesleyan College, St. Lawrence University, and George Mason University, and was Whichard Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at East Carolina University. His literary papers are archived at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Joe David Bellamy died suddenly on August 5, 2014 in Sanford, Florida.
The founding editor of Fiction International magazine (1973), Bellamy was a former president of both the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines; he also served as Director of the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts (1990-1992). His articles, fiction, poetry and reviews have been published in The Atlantic,The Nation, Harper’s, Paris Review, Narrative, The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Partisan Review, Story, North American Review, The Washington Post Book World, and more than sixty others.
In 1989 Bellamy won the Editors’ Book Award from Pushcart Press for his novel Suzi Sinzinnati, and Atomic Love, his 1993 collection of short stories, was an AWP Award Series selection. He also authored/edited sixteen other books, including Green Freedom, 2012; The Lost Saranac Interviews: Forgotten Conversations with Famous Writers, 2007; New World Extra, Literary Luxuries: American Writing at the End of the Millennium, 1995; American Poetry Observed: Poets On Their Work, 1988; The Frozen Sea: Poems, 1988; Olympic Gold Medalist: Poems, 1978; Superfiction, or The American Story Transformed, 1975; The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative Writers, 1974, and three genealogy books: Kindred Spirits: 400 Years of an American Family, 2011; Island in the Sky: Bellamy and Allied Families, 2010, and The Bellamys of Early Virginia, 2005.
David Mould
David Mould, professor emeritus of media arts and studies at Ohio University, has traveled widely in Asia and southern Africa as a trainer, consultant, and researcher, and has written articles and essays for newspapers, magazines and online media. Born in the UK, he worked as a newspaper and TV journalist before moving to the US in 1978. Postcards from the Borderlands is his third book on travel, history and culture. Kirkus Reviews describes him as “A genial travel guide … an academic who does not write like an academic.”
Karin Cecile Davidson
Karin Cecile Davidson is the author of the novel Sybelia Drive (Braddock Avenue Books, 2020). Her story collection The Geography of First Kisses was awarded the 2022 Acacia Fiction Prize and is forthcoming from Kallisto Gaia Press in 2023. Her stories have appeared in Five Points, Story, The Massachusetts Review, Colorado Review, Passages North, Post Road, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Her awards include an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Waasmode Short Fiction Prize, the Orlando Prize for Short Fiction, a Peter Taylor Fellowship, and residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and The Studios of Key West. Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, she now lives in Columbus, Ohio. https://www.karinceciledavidson.com/
David Hassler
David Hassler, MFA directs the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. In 2009, he cofounded Traveling Stanzas, a community arts project which creates illustrations in response to poems generated from community workshops in schools, healthcare facilities, libraries, senior centers, and veterans’ organizations. Hassler is the author or editor of ten books of poetry and nonfiction, including Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic; Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community; and Speak a Powerful Magic: Ten Years of the Traveling Stanzas Poetry Project. His play, May 4th Voices: Kent State, 1970, based on the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, was published by The Kent State University Press along with a Teacher’s Resource Book and was produced in 2020 as a national radio play by the WKSU NPR station. Hassler’s awards include Ohio Poet of the Year, the Ohioana Book Award, and the Carter G. Woodson Honor Book Award. His TEDx talk, “The Conversation of Poetry,” conveys the power of poetry to strengthen communities. In addition to his creative writing publications, he has co-authored articles on poetry, technology, and healing in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, and the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing.
David Matthews
A Discovery of World-Acclaimed Poetess Nikki Giovanni. In 1972 and since then has made a lasting impression in the world of poetry. As a native of Dayton, Ohio, often Matthews has been referred to, as the next Paul Laurence Dunbar. Matthews graduated from Urbana University Urbana, Ohio with a B.S. in Behavioral Science B.A. in Sociology and a minor in Theatre and Creative Writing in 1974. His books are in libraries across the country. If you take a Poetry 101 course from the University of Northern Colorado in Greenly, Colorado or Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee, you will have to study the works of David Matthews.
Over the years Matthews has performed in over 21 different States, at over 300 College and University campuses and in Europe. Matthews has been awarded, the
‘National Poem of the Year Award’ from the Los Angeles, American Poet Society twice. First in 1973 for the poem “America Ain’t You Got No Shame”. Then again in 1976 for the poem “They Say Bicentennial But We Are The Ones That Over Came, Can You Get To That?” He is the only poet to receive the award twice.
Matthews was also awarded the ‘Outstanding Young Man of The Year Award’ in Montgomery, Alabama in 1980. He received the ‘Literary Consciousness Award’ from Northern Kentucky University in 1981. The’ Key to the city of Dayton’ 1982 and the ‘WROU U92 Black Achievement Award’ in 2001. In addition, he received ‘Dayton’s Top 10 African American Award’ in 2006.
Not a stranger to the stage, Matthews has performed with a variety of artist, including Gil Scott-Heron, the group WAR and Grover Washington Jr. He performed for years with his, poetry production company called “An Evening On Broadway with Author, Poet/Musician david Matthews.” He is the author of three books of poetry and a CD: the feel of FEELING 1976, Time Brings About A Change 1980, MESSAGE 1984 and CD – A Poetic Awakening 2002. Barnes & Nobles in 2010 quoted the value of Matthews first published poetry book, the feel of FEELING 1976 an autographed copy at $202. The manuscript was published by Vantage Press in New York City. Matthews is amazingly talented he also plays 19 different African and Latin Percussion instruments. He continues to reach audiences throughout the country and makes an impact in the community through his art.
David Arnold
David Arnold is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Mosquitoland, I Loved You in Another Life, The Electric Kingdom, Kids of Appetite, and The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik. He has won the Southern Book Prize and the Great Lakes Book Award, and was named a Publishers Weekly Flying Start for his debut. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife and son. Learn more at davidarnoldbooks.com and follow him on Instagram @iamdavidarnold.
David Rickert
David Rickert is an educator as well as an author and illustrator of comics. After receiving his teaching degree from Ohio State University, David had an itch to create comics for education. Working with the Teachers Pay Teachers marketplace, teachers around the world have embraced his comics as an effective way to teach English to young readers.