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.
John W. Kropf
John Kropf is the author of Unknown Sands: Journeys Around the World’s Most Isolated Country that Publisher’s Weekly praised as a fascinating narrative bound to hook adventurers. His writing has appeared in appeared The Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Kropf was born in Sandusky and raised in Erie County, Ohio. He is an attorney in the Washington, DC. area. http://compulsivelyaimless.blogspot.com/
Nan Kuhlman
Nan Kuhlman is an author, freelance writer, and part-time university professor who lives in Los Angeles but still thinks of rural northwest Ohio as home. Her nonfiction book Nontraditional: Life Lessons from a Community College tells of her time spent as an adjunct writing professor at a small community college there and intertwines the stories of her nontraditional students with her own nontraditional start in higher education. The lesson of Nontraditional is about life’s circuitous nature and how the indirect way may be the best route to get where you need to go.
Nan currently works as a technical writer in Los Angeles, but because her freelancing career has spanned more than two decades, she can’t break her streak and continues to freelance in her free time. You can read her eclectic collection of writing at http://www.nankuhlman.com.
Jillian Kuhlmann
Jillian Kuhlmann spent her formative years feeding her overactive imagination with The X-Files and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
She grew up on a farm, leaving many library books out in the rain and playing pioneer after she read (a lot of) Laura Ingalls Wilder. Writing stories with her best friend during her adolescence was preferable to admitting that there wasn’t any such thing as fairies or actually mustering up the courage to talk to boys.
After receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and English Literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 2006 and her Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati in 2008, Jillian lost herself in writing the first of many drafts of The Hidden Icon. Between edits she got married and had a baby (both of these things were awesome; the editing, not so much).
Though she still toys with short fiction and flash fiction, novel-length fiction has always been her favorite to write and to read. Juliet Marillier’s Son of the Shadows is easily her favorite book of all time.
She lives with her husband, their two daughters, and a wicked costume collection in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Julia Kuo
Julia Kuo is the author and illustrator of Let’s Do Everything and Nothing and Luminous: Living Things that Light Up the Night. She is the illustrator of many picture and specialty books including the bestselling book RISE. Julia has created editorial illustrations for publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. She has taught at Columbia College Chicago and at her alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. Learn more at: https://www.juliakuo.com/.
Peter Kurtz
Peter Kurtz was born in New Jersey but raised in Mansfield, Ohio. He obtained a B.S. in Journalism from Ohio University and currently lives in Cincinnati. He’s worked as a jazz disc jockey, freelance writer, and primarily as an engineering technical writer. Kurtz’s books include Bluejackets in the Blubber Room (University of Alabama Press), praised by both maritime and Civil War historians; a trail-hiking memoir, Evergreen Dreaming; and the Nick Montaigne detective mysteries, Black Jackknife and The Shades Dripped Red, the latter of which was inspired by an unsolved true crime in Kurtz’s old neighborhood. His books have earned glowing reviews from Publishers Weekly and Midwest Book Review.
Kurtz enjoys marathon running, backpacking, reading, travel, playing guitar, and enjoying his three granddaughters. He cites his greatest achievements (besides raising a family) as completing a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, and reading all of Herman Melville’s sea books several times over. Learn more at: https://peterkurtz.wordpress.com
Barbara Kussow
Barbara Kussow is the author of a novel, PORTRAIT OF ANNIE, and two novellas, THE SPENCERS OF OHIO; AN ABOLITIONIST FAMILY IN THE CIVIL WAR ERA and THE MERLIN SUBSIDIARY. She is a contributor to WRITING AFTER RETIREMENT (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014; ed. by Carol Smallwood and Christine Redman-Waldeyer). Poetry and short stories have been published in several print and online venues; book reviews and book columns have appeared in local papers. She edited and published Still Crazy, a literary magazine that published works written by and/or about people over age 50, from 2008-2017.Barbara’s education includes a B.S. and M.Ed. in English Education at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and an M.L.S. from Kent State University, Ohio.
Stephen Kuusisto
Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a professorship in the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.
Jason R. Lady
Jason is an army brat who grew up moving around a total of seven times on military bases from Germany to Fort Knox, Kentucky. From a family of avid readers, Jason was encouraged to read fantasy and science fiction, and write his own stories and comic strips from an early age. Jason wrote his first novel-length story in high school–a parody of Robin Hood that starred all his friends, and got passed around on the bus and read on the way to cross-country races. Jason is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. When he’s not writing, Jason can be found working in Human Resources, talking about and enjoying 1980’s music and popular culture, watching Marvel movies, working on visiting all the MLB baseball stadiums, and following the Cleveland Guardians. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife and many great friends. His first novel, Monster Problems, was accepted to the 2020 Ohioana Library Association Book Festival and the 2020 Kentucky Book Festival. The prequel, Super Problems, was accepted to the 2021 Ohioana Library Association Book Festival, is rated IndieReader Approved, and is a Maxy Awards finalist. Time Problems is his third novel. Learn more at: https://www.jasonrlady.com/
Paula J. Lambert
Paula J. Lambert of Columbus, Ohio, has authored several collections of poetry including The Ghost of Every Feathered Thing FutureCycle Press 2022) and How to See the World (Bottom Dog Press 2020), a finalist for the 2021 Ohioana Library Book Awards. Lambert has been awarded two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards and two Greater Columbus Arts Council Resource Grants. She has twice been in residence at Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She owns Full/Crescent Press, a small publisher of poetry books and broadsides specializing in hand-stitched, art-quality chapbooks. Through the press, she has founded and supported numerous public readings that support the intersection of poetry and science, including Ohio’s annual Sun & Moon Poetry Festival now hosted by the Ohio Poetry Association.