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.
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/
Michael Olin-Hitt
Michael Olin-Hitt is a Professor of English at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio, where he teaches creative writing, American literature, and Native American literature. In addition to the novel The Homegoing, he has published nine short stories in various literary journals, such as The Nebraska Review, The Notre Dame Review, The Other Side, and Puerto Del Sol. He has also published two works of nonfiction on spirituality: The Word of God Upon My Lips and A Fish Made of Water. He was born in Dayton, and has lived in Ohio his entire life. Currently, he lives in Uniontown with his wife and two children.
Robert Olmstead
Robert Olmstead is the author of The Coldest Night Coal Black Horse, published in 2008, and the winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction, the Ohioana Award for fiction, a #1 Book Sense Pick, and a Borders Original Voices pick. It was also a 2011-2012 Choose to Read Ohio adult title. The Coldest Night, released in April 2012 was selected as an Editors’ Pick for Amazon’s Best of 2012 list, a Publishers Weekly pick for Best Books of the Year, and a Kirkus Reviews’ Top 25 Fiction Books of 2012.Olmstead is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and an NEA grant, and he is currently a professor of English and Director of Ohio Wesleyan’s Creative Writing Program.…
Read MoreRobert Olmstead is the author of The Coldest Night Coal Black Horse, published in 2008, and the winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction, the Ohioana Award for fiction, a #1 Book Sense Pick, and a Borders Original Voices pick. It was also a 2011-2012 Choose to Read Ohio adult title. The Coldest Night, released in April 2012 was selected as an Editors’ Pick for Amazon’s Best of 2012 list, a Publishers Weekly pick for Best Books of the Year, and a Kirkus Reviews’ Top 25 Fiction Books of 2012.Olmstead is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and an NEA grant, and he is currently a professor of English and Director of Ohio Wesleyan’s Creative Writing Program. He previously served as Senior Writer in Residence at Dickinson College and as director of the creative writing program at Boise State University. Visit Robert’s website, http://www.robertolmsteadbooks.com/.
Mike Olszewski
Mike Olszewski is a veteran radio personality best known for his work at the legendary WMMS-FM. He is an educator teaching a wide range of media, speech and communications classes at Kent State University, the University of Akron and Notre Dame College. Mike is also the curator and archivist for the Ohio Broadcast Archive and Museum, a statewide project at the University of Akron documenting the history of Ohio’s radio and television.
Kristen Orlando
Writing is one of the great loves of Kristen Orlando’s life and she has been lucky enough to make it her living, first as a television producer, then as a marketer and now as a novelist. Kristen graduated with a B.A. in English literature from Kenyon College. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with the other great love of her life, Michael.
Susan Orlean
What can I tell you? I am the product of a happy and relatively uneventful childhood in Cleveland, Ohio (back when the Indians were still a lousy team, and before they became a really good team and then again became a somewhat lousy team, although I have hope again…) This was followed by a happy and relatively squandered college career at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (back when Ann Arbor hosted a Hash Bash every spring). I studied literature and history and always dreamed of being a writer, but had no idea of how you went about being a writer – or at least the kind of writer I wanted to be: someone who wrote long stories about interesting things, rather than news stories about short-lived events. There is no guidebook to becoming that kind of writer, so I assumed I’d end up doing something practical like going to law school, much as the thought of it made me cringe. After college, I moved to Portland, Oregon (back when Portland was cappuccino-free) to kill some time before the inevitable trek to law school – and amazingly enough I lucked into a writing job at a tiny now-defunct monthly magazine. That led to a job at an alternative newsweekly in Portland where I wrote music reviews and feature pieces. While I was in Portland, Mt. St. Helens erupted; I started writing for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice; I learned to cross-country ski; I failed to learn how to cook.
I moved to Boston in 1982 (back before they built the Ted Williams Tunnel and long before the Red Sox reversed the curse). I wrote for the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Globe, and started work on my first book, Saturday Night. Four years later I moved to New York. I learned how to order take-out food; wrote The Orchid Thief; became a staff writer at The New Yorker; got married. A few years ago, we moved to Los Angeles—kind of by accident, but, as it turns out, a happy accident, and for the time being we’re staying put.
These days, I spend most of my time writing for The New Yorker and working on books. My side projects? I do a weekly column for Medium, run a book club on Literati, have lots of speaking engagements, and do some television writing, including a stint on How to With John Wilson (HBO) and the forthcoming adaptation of The Library Book.
Visit her website at: http://www.susanorlean.com/author/
Tricia Orr
Tricia’s poems have been published in Zoomorphic, Rust + Moth, The Loft Anthology (Poetry Prize finalist 2013), Entelelchy International: A Journal of Contemporary Ideas, A Hundred Gourds and Contemporary Haibun.
After living in New Hampshire for 13 years, Tricia returned to her rust belt roots in Cleveland, Ohio in 2013 where she writes, tutors refugees from Somalia and Bhutan, and pulls her old dog around the block in a Radio Flyer.
Social Media:
Twitter @writeorrelse
Website Triciaorr.com
Paul Orshoski
Paul Orshoski, children’s author and poet, is a former school teacher, coach and principal from Sandusky, Ohio. He writes witty, humorous, rhyming children’s books and poems. Paul is the author of thirteen children’s books published by Treasure Bay, Inc. of Novato, California. Several of his books are part of Treasure Bay’s “We Read Phonics” series, including “Where is My Frog?”, “Robot Man”, and “Sports Dream”, which were selected as Mom’s Choice Awards Gold Honor winners in 2011. Paul has four books published in the “We Both Read” Treasure Bay series entitled, “My Sitter is a T-Rex!”, “The Mouse in My House”, “The Mouse in My House / Un raton en mi casa”, and “The Ant and The Pancake”. Paul is also the author of several poems that have appeared in poetry anthologies These include: “My Teacher’s in Detention”, “Dinner with Dracula”, “I’ve Been Burping in the Classroom”, “I Hope I Don’t Strike Out”, and “What I Did on my Summer Vacation”. Paul’s poems have also appeared in the following magazines: “Boys’ Quest”, “Fun For Kidz”, “Hopscotch For Girls”, “Scholastic Action”, and “The School Administrator”. Paul enjoys making kids giggle during school visits by enthusiastically performing his poems and books in small or large group settings wherever he is asked to present.
Bill Osinski
Bill Osinski was a newspaper reporter for 36 years and first covered the Logan murder case for the Akron Beacon Journal. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, he now writes books and screenplays, two of which have been optioned for motion picture projects. He lives with his wife Eileen near Atlanta, Georgia.
Taylor Overbey
Taylor Overbey was the managing editor of GLAD, the Christian Humor Magazine for three years in the early 1980’s. It was here that his numerous comic stories were published in over 17 issues. After leaving GLAD, he moved to California where he wrote and drew short stories for Blackthorne Comics titles Laffin’ Gas and The Legion of Stupid Heroes, and self-syndicated a weekly comic feature called, Curious Words and Fascinating Phrases, about word and phrase origins. He later wrote, performed puppets, and did animated cartoons for a children’s DVD series, A Street Called Straight.
Taylor wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, The SNIT and George Franklin Whit for his son, Elias, when Elias was in the first grade. But nine years later, with the arrival of his second child, Taylor realized he had to think about how to earn a living for the next two decades. So on the first day back to school, the 54-year-old felt very out of place among the 18-20 year olds, and the teacher who was at least a decade younger than himself. At the completion of his undergraduate program, Taylor was offered an adjunct teaching position, something he had never considered, and became excited at the prospect. While in a graduate level children’s illustration course, he wrote The I-Wants and the Gimmies for his daughter, Sophia.
“My father used to call my sister and me, ‘Grab’ and ‘Snatch’, ” says Overbey, “although I was never sure which was which. It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I saw they don’t like to share, naturally. Everything is ‘Mine!’ That, and my father’s nicknames were the inspiration for The I-Wants and the Gimmies.”
He continued on to complete his Master’s degree and is now pursuing a career as a full professor. He lives in Michigan with his wife, Youla, and two children and intends to continue writing children’s books, freelancing as an illustrator and animator, and painting.