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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Julie Flanders
Julie Flanders is an academic librarian by day and a writer the rest of the time. She is also an animal lover and has written features about pets and the importance of animal rescue for media outlets such as Best Friends Animal Society and Cat Fancy. Julie is a television addict, an avid walker, and an obsessive fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Although a lifelong Ohio resident, Julie nevertheless has an ongoing love affair with the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Julie’s novels include the paranormal thrillers Polar Night and Polar Day as well as the historical love story The Ghosts of Aquinnah. She is also the author of the horror novella The Turnagain Arm, and her horror short story “Cardinal Sin” is part of the Mayhem in the Air anthology. Julie is a history buff who loves incorporating history into her stories, which she calls “mysteries untethered by time.” For more about Julie and her books, go to julieflanders.net
Stephen Michael Flaum
Steve Flaum lived the first 74 of his 78+ years around Dayton, Ohio, where he was born. He grew up in what was once a sleepy little farm town of Centerville, Ohio; he remembers that the town was so quiet on a summer Saturday night he could sit in the middle of the only two-lane highway, gaze up at a million stars, and never a car would come by.
He almost died of a kidney infection in the fifth grade, and had to be home tutored by his teacher, Miss Shirley Battles, who gave him a book about Abraham Lincoln, and awakened in her student what would become a lifelong love of history. Steve had no idea where that love would take him in life.
He survived being the worst baseball player on every little league team he played on, and graduated from Centerville High School in 1964. He was in the first graduating class of Wright State University, and then began a career of teaching middle school social studies that lasted 31 years. He retired in 1999 from a profession that earned him many honors of recognition, but none higher than the praise given by his students for his dedication, imagination, caring and passion for his craft.
In 1999, Steve began to research his German and Irish family histories, and 24 years later, he became an author, publishing his first book, “A Story Never Shared: The Last Prussian”. It is a book of history, born of a mystery, once lived in Prussia and Cleveland, Ohio during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Steve is now as retired as a busy person can be, living on 42 acres of woods in Hillsboro, Ohio, with his wife, 4 cats and more than a few raccoons and squirrels. One of those raccoons became the inspiration for a children’s book he hopes to publish very soon. Life goes on.
Amanda Flower
Amanda Flower is a USA Today bestselling and two-time Agatha Award-winning author of over fifty mystery novels. Her novels have received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Romantic Times, and she had been featured in USA Today, First for Women, and Woman’s World. Her first Emily Dickinson Mystery, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, was an Agatha Award winner and Mary Higgins Clark Nominee. She currently writes for Penguin-Random House (Berkley), Kensington, and Sourcebooks. A former librarian, Flower and her husband own a farm and recording studio, and they live in Northeast Ohio with their adorable cats. http://www.amandaflower.com/.
Becky Gehrisch
Becky Gehrisch grew up drawing dogs and farm scenes after visiting her grandparents’ homes in the country. It’s no wonder that she went on to create Escape To Play after earning an art degree from The Ohio State University. Becky moved to a rural town in Ohio where she is constantly inspired by the beautiful countryside and wildlife just outside her window. You can find her getting into her own kind of shenanigans with her husband and kids as they explore the USA in their RV.
Carole Gerber
Carole Gerber is a poet and children’s book author living in Powell, Ohio. She has written nearly two dozen picture books, early readers, and chapter books.
Gerber has worked as a high school and middle school English teacher, an adjunct professor of journalism at Ohio State, a marketing director, editor of a company magazine, a member of creative teams at an ad agency and a hospital, a contributing editor to a computer magazine, and – finally! – as a freelance writer of hundreds of elementary textbooks, magazine articles, speeches, annual reports, and patient education materials.
Besides being a “Jill” of many trades – or more precisely – one trade, writing, with many incarnations, Gerber is married to Mark, the mother of two grown daughters, Jess and Paige, and “Mimi” to Sara and Tyler, Paige’s children. In addition, she sponsors half a dozen children at a time through World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children of all faiths in more than 100 developing countries. Gerber keeps their photos posted to remind her of her blessings and responsibilities.
In her free time, she volunteers as a tour guide for children at a local nature preserve and farm. Gerber also enjoys gardening, though her enthusiasm dwindles as summer progresses, and reading, mostly for her own pleasure and edification. Gerber belongs to a neighborhood book discussion group, enjoys traveling to learn about other countries and cultures, and practices yoga which, like writing, is humbling and challenging. For more information, visit http://carolegerber.com/
David Giffels
David Giffels is the author of eight books of nonfiction, most recently The Beginning Was the End: Devo in Ohio, coauthored with Jade Dellinger. His 2020 book Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America, was described by Publishers Weekly as a “trenchant mix of memoir, reportage, and political analysis,” and selected as one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2020. His other books include the memoirs Furnishing Eternity and All the Way Home, both winners of the Ohioana Book Award, and The Hard Way on Purpose, a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice.” His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Parade, The Iowa Review, Esquire, Grantland, and many other publications. He also wrote for the MTV animated series Beavis and Butt-Head. He is a professor of English at the University of Akron, where he serves on the faculty of the NEOMFA creative writing program.
Martin Gitlin
Martin Gitlin is an award-winning journalist and author based in Cleveland. He has had more than 130 books published since 2006. Most were written for students of all grade levels in the realms of sports, history/social studies, pop culture and biographies. Marty has also authored many very successful trade books, including The Great American Cereal Book and the highly acclaimed Powerful Moments in Sports: The Most Significant Sporting Events in American History. He is quite proud of his newest book, titled A Celebration of Animation: The 100 Greatest Cartoon Characters in Television History. Marty won more than 45 awards as a newspaper journalist before focusing on freelance writing. He also covered the Cleveland Browns for CBS Sports from 2009 to 2012 and is an experienced and fun presenter at schools and libraries.
MaryAnn Givens-Hayes
Times flies after you hit the snooze button. I am MaryAnn Givens-Hayes, born into a large extended family of fifteen in the Tar Heel state of North Carolina. I relocated to New Jersey at the age of nine. I have been married for forty years. Our seven plus four children have given me thirty grands and ten great grandchildren. As a child I loved to listen to my mother read books or tell stories. Those times took me to another world. I began to create my own stories and eventually I wrote them down. Reading is my passion. Writing is my life. Coming from a large family gives me comfort when I’m surrounded by children. I reboot in their company. I’ve had many professions over the years while seeking to find one that I loved more than working with children. I’m now working as an administrator in Columbus, Ohio at a childcare learning center. I’m living my life to write for what I love, children.
Suzanne Goldsmith
Suzanne Goldsmith graduated from Harvard University and has worked as the marketing director for a foundation, an associate producer for public television documentaries, a newspaper reporter and freelance magazine writer, and a team leader in a youth community service program. Her first book, A City Year, is the true story of a year in a youth community service program.
Suzanne’s first middle-grade novel, Washashore, was the winner of the 2014 Green Earth Book Award, YA category, and was shortlisted for the Ohioana Book Award, Children’s category. In the book fourteen-year-old Clementine has left her city life in Boston to spend the winter on Martha’s Vineyard. She’s what the locals call a “washashore”: someone who has come to live on the island but isn’t from there. An outsider. Clem doesn’t have any friends and doesn’t fit in. Her mom and dad aren’t getting along. Coco, her friend, is three hours away. But then Clem finds a fallen osprey on the beach and gets involved with the effort to save these endangered birds. When she meets a lonely boy named Daniel, everything changes . . .
Suzanne is currently working on a second novel, set in an abandoned ski lodge in southern Ohio. She visits schools, libraries and summer programs to teach writing workshops and to talk about the writing process. She is also available to do joint visits with a raptor specialist who brings live birds into the classroom. She lives with her family in the Columbus area, and can be found on the web at http://www.suzanne-goldsmith.com.
Chelsea Gottfried
Chelsea Gottfried works as a naturalist and nature-based preschool teacher for the Crawford Park District in north central Ohio. She is an avid gardener and a passionate entomologist. https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Gardening+for+Moths