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.
- You are searching within category(ies): 2024
Tameka N. Ellington
Tameka N. Ellington is a fashion scholar, educator, and expert on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The author of several articles and two books, she is the co-curator of the award-winning exhibition TEXTURES: the history and art of Black hair.
Kelcey Ervick
Kelcey Ervick is the author and illustrator of the graphic memoir, The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women’s Lives, winner of a 2023 Ohioana Book Award. She is the author of three other award-winning books and co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature. Kelcey has a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and is a professor of English at Indiana University South Bend. Learn more about her writing and art at kelceyervick.com
Charlene Fix
Charlene Fix, an Emeritus English Professor at Columbus College of Art and Design, taught the writing of essays and poems, American Literature, Film and Literature, and special topics courses she created like The Artist as Protagonist, Word and Image, and Road Trip! The Picaresque Novel (and Some Films). She chaired the English and Philosophy Department for about ten years.
A member of The House of Toast Poets, a workshop and performance group, she has received poetry fellowships from both the Ohio and the Greater Columbus Arts Councils, and has published poems in various literary magazines, among them Poetry, Literary Imagination, Hotel Amerika, The Journal, The Manhattan Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rattle, and The Cincinnati Review. She won the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award and the Louis Hammer Memorial Award from The Poetry Society of America and was a finalist once for The Lyric Poem Award. Her poem, “They Thought Our Sins Were Bread,” (in Jewgirl) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Manhattan Review. Charlene is the author of two chapbooks: Mischief (Pudding House 2003) & Charlene Fix: Greatest Hits (Kattywompus 2012), and four full length collections: Flowering Bruno, a dog-besotted collection of poems with illustrations by Susan Josephson (XOXOX Press 2006 and finalist for the 2007 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry), Frankenstein’s Flowers, poems inspired by myth, books, and films (CW Books 2014), Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat, poems inhabited by the four-legged and winged nations (Bottom Dog Press, 2018), and Jewgirl (shortlisted for the Sexton Prize from Eyewear Publishing; Broadstone Books 2023), as well as a prose/homage, Harpo Marx as Trickster, a critical study of Harpo in the thirteen Marx Brothers’ films (McFarland 2013). She has published two critical essays: “Yes and Yass: Dean Moriarty’s Ecstatic and Lugubrious Affirmations in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road” (Xavier Review, February 2014), and “The Lost Father in Death of a Salesman” (Michigan Quarterly Review, summer 2008). Her poem, “What Dreams May Be” appears on the Academy of American Poets website.
Charlene is an activist for peace and social justice. Mother of three, grandmother of two, she co-coordinates Hospital Poets at the Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospitals.
Erin Flanagan
Erin Flanagan is the author of two short-story collections and three novels including Deer Season, winner of the 2022 Edgar for Best First Novel, and the most recent Come with Me. She is an English professor at Wright State University and a regular book reviewer for Publishers Weekly. For more information about her and her writing, please visit http://www.erinflanagan.net or say hello on Twitter and Instagram at @erinlflanagan.
Patti Flinn
Patti Flinn is an author of romance (two novels and two novellas under the name Ava Bleu), one children’s book in both English and French, two historical novellas, and the anticipated 3‐book series THE LAST FAVORITE’S PAGE.
Patti’s first romance novel, THE DIVA OF PEDDLER’S CREEK won the 2010 Romance Writers Ink Award for Romantic comedy and her second, GLORIOUS SUNSET, was a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Award. In 2022, after shifting to 18th‐century French historical fiction, Flinn penned VÉRONIQUE’S JOURNEY (winner of the Independent Book Publishing Assn Ebook Award for Fiction) and VÉRONIQUE’S MOON featuring a young woman of African descent sewing her way into French high society.
Based on French historical figure Louis‐Benoit Zamor, THE LAST FAVORITE’S PAGE series explores what life might have been like for this black man who was forever known as a traitor for turning over Madame Jeanne du Barry to the French Revolutionary Tribunal. The first book in the series, THE GREATEST THING, was released November 30, 2023.
Patti lives in Central Ohio and loves listening to smooth jazz, reading, and collecting and trying recipes from unique and antique cookbooks in her spare time. After returning to school for her MBA, Flinn created the “Exploring My Happy” blog to encourage women Gen X and older to keep pursuing their dreams, no matter their age. https://gildedorangebooks.com.
Amanda Flower
Amanda Flower is a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author of over fifty mystery novels. Her novels have received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and RomanticTimes, and she had been featured in USA Today, First for Women, and Woman’s World. Her first Emily Dickinson Mystery, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, was a Agatha Award winner and Mary Higgins Clark Nominee. She currently writes for Penguin-Random House (Berkley), Kensington, and Sourcebooks. A former librarian, Flower and her husband own a farm and recording studio, and they live in Northeast Ohio with their adorable cats. http://www.amandaflower.com/.
David Giffels
David Giffels is the author of eight books of nonfiction, most recently The Beginning Was the End: Devo in Ohio, coauthored with Jade Dellinger. His 2020 book Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America, was described by Publishers Weekly as a “trenchant mix of memoir, reportage, and political analysis,” and selected as one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2020. His other books include the memoirs Furnishing Eternity and All the Way Home, both winners of the Ohioana Book Award, and The Hard Way on Purpose, a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice.” His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Parade, The Iowa Review, Esquire, Grantland, and many other publications. He also wrote for the MTV animated series Beavis and Butt-Head. He is a professor of English at the University of Akron, where he serves on the faculty of the NEOMFA creative writing program.
MaryAnn Givens-Hayes
Times flies after you hit the snooze button. I am MaryAnn Givens-Hayes, born into a large extended family of fifteen in the Tar Heel state of North Carolina. I relocated to New Jersey at the age of nine. I have been married for forty years. Our seven plus four children have given me thirty grands and ten great grandchildren. As a child I loved to listen to my mother read books or tell stories. Those times took me to another world. I began to create my own stories and eventually I wrote them down. Reading is my passion. Writing is my life. Coming from a large family gives me comfort when I’m surrounded by children. I reboot in their company. I’ve had many professions over the years while seeking to find one that I loved more than working with children. I’m now working as an administrator in Columbus, Ohio at a childcare learning center. I’m living my life to write for what I love, children.
Janyce Denise Glasper
Janyce Denise Glasper is a Dayton, Ohio based multidisciplinary artist, writer, and independent scholar. Her essays and short stories have appeared in ÆQAI Journal, Belt Magazine, RaceBaitr, Black Youth Project, and other publications. Currently, she is an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Art Writer Grant recipient, Roots, Wounds, & Words: Words of Resistance + Restoration Fiction Fellow, and remote contributing arts writer for the Philadelphia based publication artblog. “Route” is her debut illustrated novel.
Maxwell I. Gold
Maxwell I. Gold is an acclaimed Jewish-American cosmic horror poet and editor, with an extensive body of work comprising over 300 poems since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genre. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies such as Weird Tales Magazine, Startling Stories, Space and Time Magazine, Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, Chiral Mad 5, and many more.…
Read MoreMaxwell I. Gold is an acclaimed Jewish-American cosmic horror poet and editor, with an extensive body of work comprising over 300 poems since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genre. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies such as Weird Tales Magazine, Startling Stories, Space and Time Magazine, Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, Chiral Mad 5, and many more. Maxwell’s work has been recognized with multiple nominations including the Rhysling Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Bram Stoker Awards. Find him and his work at http://www.thewellsoftheweird.com.