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.
Leah Clifford
Leah Clifford currently lives in Ohio with her (mostly) blind cat and her roommate, who she’s been friends with since sixth grade. In her spare time she loves to travel and has been known to drive over two hours to get kickass quesadillas. So far for jobs she’s sold corn at a roadside stand, been a pizza delivery girl, a camp counselor, an extreme cave tour guide, a flight attendant, a waitress (x3), a grocery store clerk and a writer.…
Read MoreLeah Clifford currently lives in Ohio with her (mostly) blind cat and her roommate, who she’s been friends with since sixth grade. In her spare time she loves to travel and has been known to drive over two hours to get kickass quesadillas. So far for jobs she’s sold corn at a roadside stand, been a pizza delivery girl, a camp counselor, an extreme cave tour guide, a flight attendant, a waitress (x3), a grocery store clerk and a writer. Out of all of them, writing has been the most fun. She’s pretty sure she’s gonna stick with it.
Doug Coates
Doug Coates is the author of two middle-grade books used in his engaging and interactive presentations about character and good sportsmanship. Pitching for Success: Character Lessons, the Joe Nuxhall Way, and Riley’s Winning Catch; Good Character Prevails depict situational examples of good character and sportsmanship. Please email the author at Doug@authordougcoates.com if you and your school are interested in an author visit. He will also send you a comp copy of each book to review if you’d like. In a change of genre, the author published his first picture book, Bobby Button Goes to School in the spring of 2022.
Jean Colebank
Jean is in her 31st year of teaching and loves to make the seemingly difficult concepts in math much easier to understand. Her children’s book, Sit Down Little Prince! A math story about Carl Friedrich Gauss gives readers a little story, a little history and one really, big math trick! She earned a master’s degree in Math Education from Bank Street Graduate School in New York City and a bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education from The University of Akron in Ohio. Jean is a mother, grandmother, avid golfer as well as a writer, editor, and consultant for McGraw-Hill, Scholastic, and other educational publishers.
Liz Coley
Liz Coley has been writing short and long fiction for teens and adults for more than ten years. Her short fiction has appeared in Cosmos Magazine and several speculative fiction anthologies: The Last Man, More Scary Kisses, and Strange Worlds. In 2011, she self-published the YA novel Out of Xibalba, a story that begins when the world ends. The same week Out of Xibalba launched, Liz sold YA dark contemporary psychological thriller Pretty Girl-13 to HarperCollins for international publication. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband, her teenaged daughter, a snoring dog, and a limping old cat. The two older boys have flown the nest for college. Her passions beyond reading and writing include singing, photography, and baking. She plays competitive tennis to keep herself fit and humble. Taped on her computer are her “lucky charms”—the fifteen Chinese cookie fortunes collected over the years which spoke to her writing aspirations and encouraged her along the journey. She’s LizColeyBooks on social media and at http://www.LizColey.com.
Abby Collette
Wall Street Journal bestselling author Abby Collette loves a good mystery. She was born and raised in Cleveland, and it’s a mystery even to her why she hasn’t yet moved to a warmer place. As Abby Collette, she is the author of the Ice Cream Parlor mystery series, about a millennial MBA-holding granddaughter running a family-owned ice cream shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and the upcoming Books & Biscuits mystery series, starring a set of fraternal twins who reunite and open a bookstore and soul food café. Writing as Abby L. Vandiver, she is the author of the Logan Dickerson Mysteries, featuring a second-generation archaeologist and a nonagenarian, as well as the Romaine Wilder Mysteries, pairing an East Texas medical examiner and her feisty, funeral-home-owning auntie as sleuths. Abby spends her time writing, facilitating writing workshops at local libraries and hanging out with her grandchildren, each of whom are her favorite. Find her website here: http://www.abbycollette.com
Cindy Collins
Cindy Collins’ first work, Born Under the Gaslight, is a memoir of her life living with Borderline Personality Disorder. Her memoir tells the struggle of being born into abuse, graduating to a life of a homeless, drug-dealing street racer to her recovery through dialectic behavioral therapy. As an author, she has been interviewed on the radio show “It Matters with Kelly Cordes” on WJON FM 95.3/AM 1240. She was a guest speaker on the Psychology of Victims of Crime & Violence for Dr. Jan Yager at Iona College-New Rochelle, NY. Born Under that Gaslight achieved #1 Best Seller in Personality Disorders on Amazon in the US, UK, and Germany. She is a current voice writing for Swaay.com. Her life has included various adventures ranging from training on a trapeze, starting a fire center for fire performers, and running obstacle courses with SWAT. From obtaining work as a massage therapist or a chef, her life has been in constant flux with new experiences. Cindy lives with her husband Darrin and their dog and cat. She hopes to inspire others battling mental illness.
Dawn Combs
Dawn Combs is an ethnobotanist with over 20 years experience in botanical based wellness. Dawn is a nationally respected educator and speaker, an online and in print contributor to several national magazines, co-owner of Mockingbird Meadows and Director of its educational programs. She lives on a farm in Central Ohio with her husband, Carson, and two children, Aidan and Jacy. Dawn is the author of Conceiving Healthy Babies: An Herbal Guide to Support Preconception, Pregnancy and Lactation, and Heal Local, 20 Essential Herbs for Do-it-Yourself Home Healthcare.
Jane Congdon
Jane Congdon grew up in the mountains of West Virginia. After graduating from Concord College (now Concord University) she made a career of words, working as an English teacher and a newspaper reporter before finding her niche as a textbook editor in Cincinnati, Ohio. She retired in 2009 after 30 years to write and take on selected editing projects.
At age 59, Jane followed Dracula’s footsteps through Transylvania with a guide, resulting in the memoir It Started with Dracula: The Count, My Mother, and Me. She then co-authored her brother’s memoir, Mr. Joe: Tales from a Haunted Life. Mr. Joe was a finalist for the 2014 Ohioana Book Award in Nonfiction.
At 69, Jane returned to the mountains as a backpacker on the Appalachian Trail. To date she has hiked 1,195 miles of the AT in 7 of its 14 states–Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Maine–alone, with friends, and with a glass good-luck charm named Ms. Rabbit. How the WILD EFFECT Turned Me into a Hiker at 69 is the story of Jane’s unlikely journey from the Ohio suburbs to the back country of the Appalachian Mountains.
All three books were published by Bettie Youngs Book Publishers and are available from Amazon and other outlets.
Joseph Congeni
Joseph Congeni, MD is a graduate of Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM). Dr. Congeni did his medical residency and sports medicine fellowship at Akron Children’s Hospital. He has been medical director of the Sports Medicine Center since 1988 and is an assistant professor of pediatrics at NEOUCOM.