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.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

Anne Vittur Kennedy

Anne Kennedy began her career in corporate illustration and quickly jumped to children’s books. Having illustrated for many years, she is now happily writing and illustrating her own titles. A life long love of animals and humor are evident in her work. She says her dog, Banjo, who often supervises in the studio, has incredible “dog logic” which inspired her to write Ragweed’s Farm Dog Handbook. Her time spent on farms riding horses has played a part in her stories too. Anne is the recipient of many awards, including Teacher’s Choice, Green Earth Book Award, American Library Notable Book, an Irma S. Black Honor Book, and she is honored too to represent Ohio with her Ohioana Choose To Read book, The Farmer’s Away! Baa! Neigh!

Jillian Kent

Jillian Kent’s first novel in The Ravensmoore Chronicles, Secrets of the Heart, debuted in 2011 and held readers captive winning four stars from Romantic Times and first place in the 2012 Wisconsin RWA Write Touch Contest. Also, in 2012, Chameleon, the second book in the series found its way into readers hands and hearts with an, “I dare you to solve the ending,” challenge from the author. Mystery of the Heart, book three in the series (2013) is already grabbing the attention of readers who love a romantic adventure. Jillian resides in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is employed as a counselor for nursing students. She’s married, the mother of two adult daughters, and loves animals, chocolate, and coffee. You can find her on the web at http://www.jilliankent.com.

Aya Khalil

Aya Khalil is the award-winning author of picture books and board books. Aya holds a master’s degree in education. Aya and her books have been featured on Oprah Daily, The Washington Post, and USA Today. She immigrated from Egypt to the United States when she was young and currently lives with her partner and three children in Northwest Ohio.…Read More

Intisar Khanani

Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. She has lived in five different states as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. Until recently, Intisar wrote grants and developed projects to address community health with the Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to saving the world.…Read More

Brendan Kiely

Brendan Kiely is The New York Times bestselling author of All American Boys (with Jason Reynolds), Tradition, The Last True Love Story, and The Gospel of Winter. His most recent book is The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege. His work has been published in over a dozen languages, and has received the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, the Walter Dean Meyers Award, and ALA’s Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults. A former high school teacher, he is now on the faculty of the Solstice MFA Program. He watches too much basketball and reads too many books at the same time, but most importantly, he lives for and loves his wife and son.

Joey S. Kim

I am an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo. Prior to arriving in Toledo, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University's Kilachand Honors College and held teaching positions at Ohio State and UT-Austin. I research and teach global Anglophone literature with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century poetics and aesthetics. My first book project, Romanticism and the Poetics of Orientation, identifies a new mode of cultural production, what I deem a “poetics of orientation,” in nineteenth-century Romantic literature.…Read More

I am an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo. Prior to arriving in Toledo, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University’s Kilachand Honors College and held teaching positions at Ohio State and UT-Austin. I research and teach global Anglophone literature with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century poetics and aesthetics. My first book project, Romanticism and the Poetics of Orientation, identifies a new mode of cultural production, what I deem a “poetics of orientation,” in nineteenth-century Romantic literature. This “poetics of orientation” roots the self-formation of the poetic subject in forms of cultural difference. In addition to nineteenth-century topics, I also work on global Asian culture and multiethnic U.S. literature. My next book project, The Yellow Nineteenth Century, traces Asian North American culture through print culture and newspapers in the postbellum period. My research has been supported by the NEH, the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, and others. I have published work in Essays in Romanticism, LA Review of Books, American Periodicals, Pleiades: Literature in Context, The Keats-Shelley Review, The Keats-Shelley Journal, Shondaland, The Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies, and elsewhere. A poet as well as a literary critic, my award-winning debut book of poems, Body Facts, was released by Diode Editions on June 15, 2021.

Visit her website at: https://www.joeyskim.com/

David Kimmel

David Kimmel is a descendant of one of the suspects in the Secaur murder. He is an award-winning professor of English at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio, where he investigates the boundary between historical writing and historical fiction. Outrage in Ohio is his debut work.Read More

Daniel Kirk

Daniel Kirk is the author and illustrator of fifty books for children, including his best-selling series of Library Mouse books, his non-fiction picture book Rhino in the House, The Big Slide, and his latest picture book series, Newton and Curie, Science Squirrels. Library Mouse is a Booklist Editor’s Choice book, an Education.com Essential gift, a Parenting Magazine Best Mom-Tested Book of the Year, a Kansas Reading Association Award Nominee, a Booksense pick, inner of the NAPPA Gold Award, the 2011 Young Hoosiers award. and a Choose to Read Ohio choice for 2013-2014. Booklist gave Library Mouse a starred review and said: “Put a mouse in a library and you have a sure seller; make the mouse a writer and you have a sure-fire hit…It’s a show stopper. Ready-made to introduce a class to writing activity…this book is fun, fun, fun.”

Newton and Curie, Science Squirrels tells the tale of a young squirrel and his sister, who learn to make simple machines and build a playground that’s just their size. They discover that science is for everyone—even squirrels! Kirkus says: “A positive and fun-filled challenge to recognize and apply the underlying principles of science in everyday life.” Booklist says: “Budding scientists will be delighted by the squirrel’s-eye view of the physical world.” Publisher’s Weekly says: “The story frames plainspoken, relatable explanations of core physics concepts and the scientific method.”

Joy M. Kiser

Joy M. Kiser was born in Akron and grew up in Norton, Ohio. She began her professional career as the librarian for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in 1995. In 2001, she moved to the Washington, DC, area to become the librarian for National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). She is currently employed as a writer/editor for the U.S.…

Matt Kish

Matt Kish has spent his whole life in the Midwest, moving often and taking on a variety of jobs. He has mowed lawns at hospitals, washed dishes at a pizza place, cooked in a college cafeteria, taught high school English, worked retail at a bookstore, and served as a hospital registrar. Finally, after earning a graduate degree in library science, he became a librarian. In 2011 Kish added illustrator to his list of accomplishments with the publication of Moby Dick in Pictures: One Picture for Every Page (Tin House Books). His take on Melville’s classic novel—Kish’s favorite since he was a child—won him wide acclaim with organizations from The Huffington Post to PBS. His illustrations have also appeared in The Desert Places (Curbside Splendor Publishing, 2013) and The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2 (Seven Stories Press, 2012). Visit him at http://www.spudd64.com/.

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