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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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
Photo of Leah Stewart

Leah Stewart

Leah Stewart is the author of the novels Body of a Girl, The Myth of You and Me, Husband and Wife, The History of Us, and The New Neighbor. The daughter of an Air Force officer and an elementary school teacher, she lived as a child in Virginia, Idaho, England, Kansas, and Virginia again.…Read More

Leah Stewart is the author of the novels Body of a Girl, The Myth of You and Me, Husband and Wife, The History of Us, and The New Neighbor. The daughter of an Air Force officer and an elementary school teacher, she lived as a child in Virginia, Idaho, England, Kansas, and Virginia again. She went to high school in Clovis, New Mexico (a town featured in her second novel, The Myth of You and Me), college at Vanderbilt University, and graduate school at the University of Michigan. Since then, she has lived in Boston and Chapel Hill and held visiting writer positions at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee; Vanderbilt University; and Murray State University in Kentucky. Now a professor at the University of Cincinnati, she lives in Cincinnati with her husband and two children. In 2010, she was the recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship and in 2014 the recipient of a Sachs Fund Prize, given for contributions to Cincinnati arts and culture. Her fourth novel, The History of Us, which is set in Cincinnati, is on the Choose to Read Ohio list for 2015–16. For more, go to leahstewart.com

Photo of Deanne Stillman

Deanne Stillman

Deanne Stillman is a widely published, critically acclaimed writer. Her books include Blood Brothers (Ohioana Book Award winner, starred review, Kirkus; "best of the West 2018," True West Magazine); Desert Reckoning (winner of the Spur and LA Press Club Awards for nonfiction, an amazon editors pick, based on a Rolling Stone piece), and Mustang, a Los Angeles Times “best book of the year.” In addition, she wrote the cult classic, Twentynine Palms, a Los Angeles Times bestseller that Hunter Thompson called “A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer.” She writes the “Letter from the West” column for the Los Angeles Review of Books and her plays have been produced and won prizes around the country.…Read More

Deanne Stillman is a widely published, critically acclaimed writer. Her books include Blood Brothers (Ohioana Book Award winner, starred review, Kirkus; “best of the West 2018,” True West Magazine); Desert Reckoning (winner of the Spur and LA Press Club Awards for nonfiction, an amazon editors pick, based on a Rolling Stone piece), and Mustang, a Los Angeles Times “best book of the year.” In addition, she wrote the cult classic, Twentynine Palms, a Los Angeles Times bestseller that Hunter Thompson called “A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer.” She writes the “Letter from the West” column for the Los Angeles Review of Books and her plays have been produced and won prizes around the country. She’s a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program, where she teaches nonfiction.

https://www.newsweek.com/blood-brothers-sitting-bull-buffalo-bill-book-book-excerpt-674632

https://themillions.com/2017/11/reconciling-americas-original-sin-the-millions-interviews-deanne-stillman.html

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/locked-out-of-time-a-conversation-with-deanne-stillman/

R.L. Stine

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Photo of Alison Stine

Alison Stine

ALISON STINE is the author of the novel Trashlands (MIRA / HarperCollins), which The LA Times called a “ballad to love in a time of darkness,” longlisted for the 2022 Reading the West Book Award, a current finalist for the Ohioana Book Award and currently longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.…

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ALISON STINE is the author of the novel Trashlands (MIRA / HarperCollins), which The LA Times called a “ballad to love in a time of darkness,” longlisted for the 2022 Reading the West Book Award, a current finalist for the Ohioana Book Award and currently longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her first novel Road Out of Winter won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award.

She is also the author of three poetry collections published on university presses and a novella. Her next novel Dust will be published by Wednesday Books (Macmillan) in fall 2023.

Recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Ohio Arts Council grant, a Sustainable Arts grant, and a reporting grant from National Geographic, she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a Ruth Lilly Fellow from the Poetry Foundation, and received the Studs Terkel Award for Media and Journalism.

Partially deaf, she is the Staff Culture Writer at Salon, and has also reported for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, 100 Days in Appalachia, and more. After living in rural Ohio for many years, where she was raised and where her son was born, she now lives in Colorado with her family. Check out her website: https://www.alisonstine.com/

 

Photo of Keith Stone

Keith Stone

Keith Stone is a quadriplegic. Although his body may not work like it used to his mind is still sharp. Through the use of an unusual keyboard and mouse set up along with voice to text software he has authored six books. They include his memoir and five novels. Keith writes out of his Ohio home where he lives with his wife of 37 years, Sarah.Read More

Keith Stone is a quadriplegic. Although his body may not work like it used to his mind is still sharp. Through the use of an unusual keyboard and mouse set up along with voice to text software he has authored six books. They include his memoir and five novels.

Keith writes out of his Ohio home where he lives with his wife of 37 years, Sarah. Since his golf cart accident in 2015 left him paralyzed from C4 down, available activities for Keith have become limited. The former accountant is still blessed with a strong mind and an excellent sense of humor. Keith turned to writing to use both.

Photo of Dan Stout

Dan Stout

Dan Stout lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he writes noir with a twist of magic and a disco chaser. His prize-winning fiction draws on his travels throughout Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim, as well as an employment history spanning everything from subpoena server to assistant well driller. Dan's stories have appeared in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Nature, and Mad Scientist Journal.…Read More

Dan Stout lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he writes noir with a twist of magic and a disco chaser. His prize-winning fiction draws on his travels throughout Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim, as well as an employment history spanning everything from subpoena server to assistant well driller. Dan’s stories have appeared in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Nature, and Mad Scientist Journal. TITAN SONG is the third volume in The Carter Archives from DAW Books. You can follow him on Facebook or your social media site of choice.

Photo of Robert Allen Stowe

Robert Allen Stowe

A new voice on the literary scene, Robert Allen Stowe borrows from his unusual past to create characters so real you can almost smell them. He writes about life as he's seen it, and he's seen it from many different angles, from the bottom to the top. This is his first published work but is sure not to be his last.…Read More
A new voice on the literary scene, Robert Allen Stowe borrows from his unusual past to create characters so real you can almost smell them. He writes about life as he’s seen it, and he’s seen it from many different angles, from the bottom to the top. This is his first published work but is sure not to be his last. There are too many tales yet to be told. His books include: The Third Pitch (Pub. Sept., 2021) and The Fires of Rubicon (Pub. date, Oct. 26, 2023).
Photo attribution: Tess Smith Photography
Photo of Jessica Strawser

Jessica Strawser

Jessica Strawser is the author of six book club favorite novels: Almost Missed You, Not That I Could Tell (a Book of the Month selection), Forget You Know Me, A Million Reasons Why, The Next Thing You Know (a People Magazine Pick, now new in paperback), and her latest, The Last Caretaker.…Read More

Jessica Strawser is the author of six book club favorite novels: Almost Missed You, Not That I Could Tell (a Book of the Month selection), Forget You Know Me, A Million Reasons Why, The Next Thing You Know (a People Magazine Pick, now new in paperback), and her latest, The Last Caretaker. She is editor-at-large at Writer’s Digest, where she curates the Learn by Example column; a popular speaker at writing conferences; and a freelance editor and writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love, Publishers Weekly, and others. A graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, she lives with her husband and two children in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she served as 2019 writer-in-residence for the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library. For more information, visit http://www.jessicastrawser.com.

Photo of Cathy Studer

Cathy Studer

Cathy Studer is the award-winning author of Broken to Beautifully Whole, a mental health advocate, child abuse prevention advocate, and speaker. As an advocate and speaker, she is passionate about helping children and adults unlock, cultivate, and reach their full potential by developing stronger mental and emotional health. She lives in Ohio with her husband and their yellow lab, Levi.…Read More

Cathy Studer is the award-winning author of Broken to Beautifully Whole, a mental health advocate, child abuse prevention advocate, and speaker. As an advocate and speaker, she is passionate about helping children and adults unlock, cultivate, and reach their full potential by developing stronger mental and emotional health. She lives in Ohio with her husband and their yellow lab, Levi. Cathy loves spending time with her two adult children and grand dogs.

Photo of Tracy Subisak

Tracy Subisak

Tracy Subisak is the Taiwanese and Polish American author-illustrator of award-winning Jenny Mei Is Sad. She has also illustrated many books, including: This Book Is Not For You!, by Shannon Hale, and Amah Faraway, by Margaret Chiu Greanais. Tracy lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, her dog Lala, and many, many plants.…Read More

Tracy Subisak is the Taiwanese and Polish American author-illustrator of award-winning Jenny Mei Is Sad. She has also illustrated many books, including: This Book Is Not For You!, by Shannon Hale, and Amah Faraway, by Margaret Chiu Greanais. Tracy lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, her dog Lala, and many, many plants. You can visit her online at tracysubisak.com and on Instagram at @tracysubisak.