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.
Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the novels Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages. To learn more about her, visit celesteng.com or follow her on Twitter (@pronounced_ing).
Melica Niccole
Melica Niccole is a native resident of Columbus, Ohio where she is an mother, author, poet, and Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor. Growing up on the Southeast Side of Columbus, she attended schools such as: Livingston Elementary, Barrett Middle, and Briggs High Schools. She also lived in New Jersey for approximately five years, where she co-founded an annual Children’s Book Festival in Camden, New Jersey, collected over 250 children’s books for book drives, collected book bags for a New York elementary school, and participated in local events.
She developed a fondness of writing and creating things at an early age. Writing was a creative expressive technique that she used to talk about various subject matters, such as relationships, domestic violence, friendships, and more. These subjects were mainly expressed in the form poetry.
After graduating from college, Melica sought to be a published author. Although she did not become a published author right after her undergraduate work at Otterbein University, the drive and determination within her stayed the same. She has performed in front of audiences at The National Black Book Festival, Inspired Word NYC, The Ohio State University, Newark Public Library (New Jersey), Laughin & Loungin, Writing Wrongs Poetry open mic events, and other places around the country. Her hard work finally paid off in August of 2010 when she released her first book titled, Dead Wrong. She has written 22 books/Kindle Vellas with 2 Children’s Books in development.
Melica has a Master’s Degree in Science Administration with a concentration in Health Services and a certificate in Human Resources from Central Michigan University. Her Bachelor’s of Arts Degree is in Health Promotion and Fitness from Otterbein University. In 2012, she was deemed the first alumni to receive the Author of the Month distinction at Otterbein. She was then awarded the Diversity (2018) and Leadership and Citizenship Awards (2019) from Otterbein as well, due to her work with planning and creating programming and collecting literacy items for disadvantaged populations. In 2022, Melica participated in Otterbein’s first African-American Read-In Program, which was an initiative developed by the National Council of Teachers of English. The initiative allows various schools and organizations to create similar programs based on their resources.
Melica loves living outside the box and creating new and exciting things. She believes that anything is possible with passion and determination. She has worked with individuals with Developmental Disabilities, Mental Health Diagnosis, At-risk youth, children, and various populations for about 15 years.
Stacy Nockowitz
Stacy Nockowitz is a middle school librarian and former language arts teacher with 30+ years of experience in middle grade education. She holds Master’s Degrees from Columbia University and Kent State University, and is an MFA candidate in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her debut middle grade novel, The Prince of Steel Pier (Kar-Ben), won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for Middle Grade Literature and was named a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable Book for 2023. The Prince of Steel Pier was a PJ Our Way selection for October 2022, and Stacy received a PJ Library Author Incentive Award in 2020. Find her on Twitter @snockowitz or visit http://www.stacynockowitz.com.
Sarah Rose Nordgren
Sarah Rose Nordgren is a poet, teacher, and multiform text artist. Her two books of poetry are Best Bones (2014), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and Darwin’s Mother, which is recently released from University of Pittsburgh Press (November 2017).
Her poems and essays appear widely in periodicals such as Agni, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review Online, Copper Nickel, and American Poetry Review, and she creates video and performance text art in collaboration with Kathleen Kelley under the name Smart Snow.
Among her awards are two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and fellowships and scholarships from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Conferences, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
Originally from North Carolina, Nordgren earned her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA in poetry from University of North Carolina Greensboro. She’s currently at the University of Cincinnati where she is a doctoral candidate in poetry with a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Nordgren serves as an Associate Editor at 32 Poems.
Richard J. Norgard
R.J. Norgard was born and raised on Port Clinton, Ohio, a stone’s throw from the shores of Lake Erie. He began working as a reporter and photographer for the local newspaper while still in high school before embarking on a career in the U.S. Army in the field of counterintelligence. Upon his retirement, he went into business as a private investigator in Alaska, work that would later proved invaluable when he penned his first detective novel, Trophy Kill. After spending 21 years in Alaska, he has returned to his hometown where he devotes his time to writing as well as volunteering in he local community. As president of the Port Clinton Lighthouse Conservancy, he a written a book-length history of the of the town’s historic pier lighthouse. He resides with his partner, Suzy, on Catawba Island and is currently working on his second Sidney Reed novel.
Michael Nye
Michael Nye is the author of the story collection STRATEGIES AGAINST EXTINCTION (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2012) and the novel ALL THE CASTLES BURNED, forthcoming from Turner Publishing in February 2018.
He was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended the Ohio State University, where he graduated with a BA in English Literature, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he earned his MFA in creative writing.
His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Literary Review, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Crab Orchard Review, Epoch, Kenyon Review, New South, Normal School, Sou’wester, and South Dakota Review, among many others. His work has been a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in fiction and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife in Columbus, Ohio.
Phillip J Obermiller
Phillip J. Obermiller is a senior visiting scholar in the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati and a fellow at the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center. He is the author of numerous books on Appalachia and both black and white Appalachians.
Joe Oestreich
Joe Oestreich is the author of the memoir Hitless Wonder: A Life in Minor League Rock and Roll. A graduate of the Ohio State University MFA Program in Creative Writing, his work has appeared in Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Ninth Letter, Fourth Genre, and elsewhere. He has been awarded a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, honored by The Atlantic Monthly, and shortlisted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, The Best American Essays 2008 and 2009, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses 2010. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC, where he co-edits Waccamaw.
Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi’s works include WHO FEARS DEATH (in development at HBO into a TV series), the BINTI novella trilogy (optioned and in development with Media Res), THE BOOK OF PHOENIX, the NSIBIDI SCRIPTS SERIES and LAGOON. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and Lodestar Awards and her debut novel ZAHRAH THE WINDSEEKER won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature.…
Read MoreNnedi’s works include WHO FEARS DEATH (in development at HBO into a TV series), the BINTI novella trilogy (optioned and in development with Media Res), THE BOOK OF PHOENIX, the NSIBIDI SCRIPTS SERIES and LAGOON. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and Lodestar Awards and her debut novel ZAHRAH THE WINDSEEKER won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature.
Nnedi has also written an Africanfuturist comic series LAGUARDIA (winner of the Hugo and Eisner Award); comics for Marvel, including BLACK PANTHER: LONG LIVE THE KING and WAKANDA FOREVER (featuring the Dora Milaje) and the SHURI series; and her short memoir BROKEN PLACES AND OUTER SPACES.
Nnedi holds a PhD (literature) and two MAs (journalism and literature). She lives with her daughter Anyaugo and family in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more at: https://nnedi.com/