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.
Thomas Scott McKenzie
Raised on a thoroughbred horse farm in Bourbon County, Kentucky, Thomas Scott McKenzie received a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Power Chord: One Man’s Ear-Splitting Quest to Find His Guitar Heroes and the co-author of The Man Behind the Nose: Assassins, Astronauts, Cannibals, and Other Stupendous Tales. McKenzie’s work has appeared in Tin House, Laptop, Premier Guitar, Stuff, The Aethlon: Journal of Sport Literature, Columbus Monthly, Salon.com, MTV’s The Hive, and others. He has been a reviewer for PopMatters.com, a staff writer for the longest running internet drama Crimescene.com, and a contributor to TechCrunch.com. He founded and runs Slushpile.net, a books and publishing blog.
Claire McMillan
Claire McMillan is a novelist, most recently of Alchemy of a Blackbird, published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in July of 2023. She is also the author of The Necklace, which was published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in 2017, as well as Gilded Age, published by Simon& Schuster in 2012. A native of Pasadena, California, she practiced law in San Francisco for six years before moving to Cleveland in 2003. As well as a JD, she holds an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. She was named the Cuyahoga County Public Library Writer in Residence for the 2017-2018 year. During that time, she taught four classes on craft that were open to the public at the Skirball Writing Center. Additionally, she held monthly office hours for aspiring writers that were open to the public. She was also a Writer in Residence onsite at the Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts. Her enthusiasm for her time there led to her being asked to serve as a Trustee on the Board of the Mount, where she still serves today. McMillan currently lives on her husband’s family farm outside of Cleveland, Ohio with their two children.
Wendy McVicker
Wendy McVicker, 2020-2022 poet laureate of Athens, Ohio, is a longtime Ohio Arts Council teaching artist. Her most recent chapbook, Zero, a Door, was also published by The OrchardStreet Press (2021). She loves collaborating with other artists, and performs with instrumentalist Emily Prince under the name “another language altogether” whenever she gets the chance. Stronger When We Touch is her first full-length collaboration with another poet.
Tim McWhorter
http://www.timmcwhorter.com (website)
@Tim_McWhorter (Twitter)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Mcwhorter-author (FB page)
tm5to1@live.com (email)
Laura Meckler
Laura Meckler is national education writer for the Washington Post, where she covers education across the country as well as national education policy and politics. She previously reported on the White House, presidential politics, immigration, and health care for the Wall Street Journal, as well as health and social policy for the Associated Press. Her honors include a Nieman Fellowship and Livingston Award for National Reporting, and she was part of a team that won the George Polk Award for Justice Reporting. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons. Learn more: https://www.laurameckler.com/
Dan Mendez Moore
Dan Méndez Moore was born and raised in Cincinnati and received his bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies at Portland State University. He first got involved in social justice organizing during high school, when he founded the Cincinnati Radical Youth, and has never stopped. He currently works organizing low-wage workers at SEIU Local 26 in Minneapolis, MN. His comics have been published in Labor Notes and Cincinnati Street Vibes and he has a series of comics used as popular education tools for low-wage workers fighting for change.
Sarah Menkedick
SARAH MENKEDICK’s work has been featured in Harper’s, Pacific Standard, Oxford American, Aeon, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh, and she was a 2015-2016 Fulbright fellow in Mexico. She was also the 2012 recipient of Ohioana’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant. Sarah is the founder of Vela, an online magazine of nonfiction writing by women.
Linda Mercadante
Linda Mercadante is the B. Robert Straker Professor of Historical Theology at The Methodist Theological School in Ohio and is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church.
Gary Meszaros
Gary Meszaros, a retired teacher, has been a nature photographer for more than 35 years. His work has appeared in several books and magazines, including Smithsonian, National Wildlife, National Parks Magazine, Natural History, and Timeline. Previous books include four titles on various facets of Ohio’s natural history.
Philip Metres
Philip Metres is the author of ten books, including Shrapnel Maps (2020), The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (2018), Pictures at an Exhibition (2016), Sand Opera (2015), I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (2015), and others. His work has garnered the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lannan Fellowship, two NEAs, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Hunt Prize, the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Watson Fellowship, the Lyric Poetry Prize, Creative Workforce Fellowship, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University