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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Blaine Paxton Hall

Blaine Paxton Hall was born in Cambridge, Ohio and grew up in Chicago and Woodstock, IL. He is the author of Hestia's House, a literary memoir with the overarching theme of home. Including historical photos, his memoir documents his growing up in the Woodstock Children's Home--which had a historical connection to Orson Welles. But the challenges of being abandoned by his parents and having to provide for all his college education could not have prepared him for the existential struggles of his medical, surgical, legal and social gender transition in 1983 at age 31.…Read More

Blaine Paxton Hall was born in Cambridge, Ohio and grew up in Chicago and Woodstock, IL. He is the author of Hestia’s House, a literary memoir with the overarching theme of home.

Including historical photos, his memoir documents his growing up in the Woodstock Children’s Home–which had a historical connection to Orson Welles.

But the challenges of being abandoned by his parents and having to provide for all his college education could not have prepared him for the existential struggles of his medical, surgical, legal and social gender transition in 1983 at age 31. He was the first to transition in NC, going his trajectory, where he’s lived since July 1981. See hestiashouse.com.

His childhood and early adulthood experiences gave rise to his developing keen intuition into the suffering of others; and he became a highly accomplished trailblazer, not only in his life, but also in his medical career. He is the Founder of the American Academy of Nephrology PAs (May 1997) and the Founder of the Duke Adult Gender Medicine Clinic (Jan 3, 2018). See: https://pahx.org/bios/hall-blaine-paxton/

Mr. Hall. artist of his life, has been inspired, sustained and informed by great literature, history and music. He is a memoirist, essayist, poet and writer of creative nonfiction. See blainepaxtonhall.com for numerous examples of his poetry and writing.

Upon concluding his clinical and teaching activities at Duke University Health System, he founded The School of Athens, an adult academy which, in the classical liberal arts tradition, provides educational experiences to inspire lifelong learning in the pursuit of the most noble ideas, artistic and intellectual accomplishments of mankind. See: theschoolofathens.net

The theme of home has been pervasive throughout Hall’s life. In December 2020, Ohio became the second-to-the-last state in the Union to allow one to amend the gender marker on one’s birth certificate. Working through Probate Court in Guernsey County, Ohio, Mr. Hall was finally able to obtain his amended birth certificate in December 2021. He framed his coveted, new birth certificate in white, to signify innocence, rebirth and hope. And he displays it right next to his original, handwritten, Cambridge Ohio, 1952 birth certificate. He is equally proud of both.