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.
Robert Miltner
Robert Miltner is the author of a book of short stories and of several collections of poetry. And Your Bird Can Sing: Short Fiction, published by Bottom Dog Press in 2014, has been nominated for 2015 Ohioana Book Award in Fiction. Hotel Utopia, a 2011 collection of prose poetry, was selected by National Book Award Finalist Tim Seibles for the 2009 New Rivers Press Many Voices Poetry Prize and was subsequently a finalist for the 2012 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry. His ten chapbooks of poetry include Against the Simple (Wick award) and Eurydice Rising (Red Berry Editions award). Miltner was the recipient of a 2014 Individual Excellence in Poetry Award from the Ohio Arts Council. An associate professor of English at Kent State University at Stark, he is concurrently on the poetry and fiction faculties of, and is KSU campus coordinator for, the Northeast Ohio MFA in Creative Writing program. He edits The Raymond Carver Review and has co-edited Not Far From Here: The Paris Symposium on Raymond Carver and New Paths to Raymond Carver: Critical Essays on His Life, Fiction, and Poetry.
Charles Mintz
Charles Mintz studied photography at the Maine Photographic Workshop, Parsons School of Design, the International Center for Photography, Lakeland Community College, and Cuyahoga Community College. He has a BSEE from Purdue University and an MSEE from Cleveland State University.
Dinara Mirtalipova
Dinara Mirtalipova is an award winning folk artist with big passion for folklore storytelling, modern children’s books, and classic fairytales. In her work Dinara uses bright primary color palette and embellishes her designs with bold folk floral patterns. Dinara is a traditional artist who paints by hand and prefers mediums like gouache and pencils on paper, printmaking and block printing. Currently, Dinara is an Assistant Professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art where she teaches Illustration, and also paints away from her home studio in Northeast Ohio, working on collaborations and commissions.
Tonya Mitchell
Ever since reading Jane Eyre in high school, Tonya has been drawn to dark stories, particularly of the Gothic variety. Her influences include Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker. More contemporarily, she loves the work of Shirley Jackson, Agatha Christie, Victoria Holt, Margaret Atwood, and Laura Purcell. When she landed on a story about a woman who pretended to be insane in order to write a newspaper story, she knew she’d landed on something she was meant to write. Tonya received her BA in journalism from Indiana University. Her short fiction has appeared in The Copperfield Review, Words Undone, and The Front Porch Review, as well as in various anthologies, including Furtive Dalliance, Welcome to Elsewhere, and Glimmer and Other Stories and Poems, for which she won the Cinnamon Press award in fiction. She is a self-professed Anglophile and is obsessed with all things relating to the Victorian period. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society North America and resides in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and three wildly energetic sons.
J. P. Mitchell
J.P. Mitchell is an educator, writer, speaker and creator whose passion is to help leaders to link vision to opportunity through the power of words. She is a two-time TEDx speaker and independent publisher of Sweet Fire, an empowerment anthem for girls and women. On J.P.’s favorite things list are good music, engaging conversation, and the great outdoors. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and two children.
Dia Mixon
Dia Mixon has a passion for introducing children to new languages and cultures. As a Spanish teacher, with a Master of Education in Bilingual-Bicultural Education, she continues to seek new ways for readers to build cultural awareness and connect with the characters she creates. Dia published her debut children’s book, One Whole Me, in 2021. She is a mother of one, an avid traveler, and currently teaches middle and high school Spanish in her hometown, Columbus, Ohio. Learn more at: https://www.el-mundo-mixon.com/
Judith Moffett
Judith Moffett was born in Louisville in 1942 and grew up in Cincinnati. She is an English professor, a poet, a Swedish translator, and the author of twelve books in six genres. These include three volumes of poetry, two of Swedish poetry in formal translation, four science-fiction novels plus a collection of stories, a volume of creative nonfiction, and a critical study of James Merrill’s poetry. She has also written an unpublished memoir of her long friendship with Merrill. Her work in poetry, translation, and science fiction has earned numerous awards and award nominations, including an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry, an NEH Translation Grant, the Swedish Academy’s Tolkningspris, and in science fiction the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the Theodore Sturgeon Award for the year’s best short story. Two of her novels were New York Times Notable Books.
Moffett earned a doctorate in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania, with a thesis on Stephen Vincent Benét’s narrative poetry, directed by Daniel Hoffman. She taught American literature and creative writing at several colleges and universities, including the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Kentucky, and for fifteen years the University of Pennsylvania. She has lived for extended periods in England (Cambridge and London) and Sweden (Lund and Stockholm), as well as around the US, living/teaching/writing in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Utah. In 1983 she married Medievalist Edward B. Irving, Jr., her colleague at Penn. Widowed in 1998, Judy now divides her year between Oxford OH and her hundred-acre recovering farm near Lawrenceburg KY, sharing both homes with her standard poodles, Corbie and Lexi.
For a complete list of Judy’s published work, visit her Wikipedia entry: wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Moffett
Wes Molebash
Wes Molebash is the creator of several popular webcomics, most notably You’ll Have That (Viper Comics) and Molebashed (self-published). He has also created cartoons for companies and organizations such as the Ohio State University, Target, and PBS Kids. Travis Daventhorpe for the Win! is his debut graphic novel. Learn more here: https://www.wesmolebash.com/.
Nicholas Money
Nicholas Money is a biologist and Western Program Director at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is a popular teacher and an international expert on fungal biology. He has authored a number of popular science books, including “The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization” and “The Selfish Ape: Human Nature and Our Path to Extinction.” His books are noted for blending first-rate science with stories of irresistible human interest.
Denise Monique
Denise Monique is a Self-Published Author, located in Cleveland, Ohio. She is a licensed social worker and loves to travel as much as possible. Each year, she travels to a place she has never been before. Other hobbies include reading, sometimes as much as a book a day. Growing up, Denise would win the summer reading club each year for having read the most books. Her nickname was One-Hundred due to her educational efforts. Her dad gave her his own nickname of Squirrel, as she was a tomboy growing up and could be found in a tree most days. Denise is very passionate about helping others find the light within themselves to start their path to better lives. She kept her story in for so many years, as she didn’t want to hurt the very people that hurt her. She has learned to view her mistakes as learning lessons and strives for greatness in life. Denise lives by the motto that anything that disturbs her peace has got to go!