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.
Debra Robinson
Debra Robinson is an author, psychic and professional musician/songwriter. She speaks on the ancient art and science of palmistry, psychic abilities, and has thriving careers in music performance and publishing. Most recently a song from her catalogue was placed in the Matthew McConaughey film trailer, Killer Joe. Debra’s first book A Haunted Life: The True Ghost Story of a Reluctant Psychic, was released by Llewellyn Worldwide in 2013. Her latest book with Llewellyn, The Dead are Watching: More Ghost Stories from a Reluctant Psychic, is both heartwarming and terrifying. It includes stories of loved ones’ returns as well as true life hauntings. She recently signed a three-book deal with Permuted Press for her paranormal fiction. The Haunting of Black Tower Mansion will be released April 2015. Sarah’s Shadows will be re-released May 2015 and the sequel to Sarah’s Shadows June 2015. Debra lives in New Philadelphia Ohio, in a haunted house.
Nicole Robinson
Nicole Robinson’s poems have appeared in Columbia Journal, The Fourth River, Great River Review, The Louisville Review, Spillway, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Individual Excellence Award for poetry from the Ohio Arts Council and the Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Currently serving as the narrative medicine coordinator at Akron Children’s Hospital, she resides in Ohio. Learn more: https://www.nicolerobinsonpoetry.com/
Margaret Rogerson
David Rohr
Born and raised in Ohio, David Rohr spent his working career in the state until the
age of 29. Even though he’s been a resident of other states since then—New York and
Tennessee—David remains a frequent Buckeye State visitor, as most of his immediate
family still resides there. He is an enthusiastic fan of Ohio State Buckeye football as
well as of many other Ohio college and professional sports teams.
His advertising and marketing communications career includes writing, creative
direction, and management for a number of advertising agencies and
communications firms. He has served clients ranging from those on the Fortune 500
to smaller companies and human services organizations. This career, as David likes to
point out, enabled him to write everything from rap songs about pastries to fulllength
books promoting multi-million dollar printing equipment. He is also an
entrepreneur, teacher, and father of three.
David is a proud graduate of Ottawa Hills High School (Toledo). In addition, he has a
B.S. in Journalism from Bowling Green State University, an M.S. in Management and
an M.A. in Liberal Studies, both from Nazareth College of Rochester plus a graduate
certificate from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Josh Rolnick
Josh Rolnick’s short story collection, “Pulp and Paper,” won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, selected by Yiyun Li. His short stories have won the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize. They have been published in Harvard Review, Western Humanities Review, Bellingham Review, and Gulf Coast, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. Josh holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and an MA in Writing from The Johns Hopkins University. He formerly served as fiction editor at the Iowa Review as well as Unstuck: A literary annual. Josh has taught writing at the University of Iowa and Chautauqua Institution in Western New York, and has appeared as a guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins and Akron University. He currently serves as an advisor for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and teaches fiction writing at the Sackett Street Writer’s Workshop.
Photo: Nancy Williams
Robert Roman
Robert J. Roman was born in Connecticut and raised in Ohio. He attended The Ohio
State University where he double-majored in psychology and American history/American
studies. There he saw tens of thousands of students, who otherwise seemed to
agree on almost nothing, be of one mind about their football team. He holds a master’s
degree in psychology from New York University and currently lives in New York City.
Mar Romasco-Moore
Mar Romasco Moore is the author of the novels I Am the Ghost in Your House, Krazyland (forthcoming), and Some Kind of Animal, as well as Ghostographs, an interconnected collection of flash fiction inspired by vintage photographs. Her stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside, DIAGRAM, Hobart, Interfictions, Kaleidotrope, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and the anthology Women Destroy Science Fiction. She recieved an MFA from Southern Illinois University and currently teaches writing at Columbus College of Art and Design. Learn more at: https://marromascomoore.com/
Stepfanie Romine
Born and raised in Ohio, Stepfanie Romine is a cookbook author, health coach and yoga teacher who has lived and cooked on three continents. After spending a year teaching English in South Korea and later discovering Ashtanga yoga, she turned her passion for health and wellness into a career. For several years, Stepfanie was the editorial director for the online healthy living community SparkPeople.com, then she worked as a copywriter and recipe developer for an herbal products manufacturer in western North Carolina. She now writes about natural health and wellness and teaches cooking classes in the Asheville area.
Stepfanie has been a registered yoga teacher since 2009, and she is also a certified health coach through the American Council on Exercise. She has completed courses in herbal supplements, ayurveda and holistic and integrative nutrition.
Cooking helped Stepfanie lose 40 pounds over a decade ago — and she’s kept it off ever since. Today she cooks healthy, seasonal, plant-based meals to fuel her running and her husband’s long-distance road cycling. Stepfanie is the co-author of The No Meat Athlete Cookbook, The SparkPeople Cookbook and The Spark Solution.
Find her at The Flexible Kitchen, or connect with her via Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
Mike Roos
Mike Roos is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, where he has been employed since 1976. He grew up in southern Indiana and played basketball for Tell City High School, graduating in 1970. He worked for two years as a sportswriter for the Tell City News. In addition to having published numerous scholarly articles, he is also a singer-songwriter and has released three albums of his own material.
Read MoreMike Roos is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, where he has been employed since 1976. He grew up in southern Indiana and played basketball for Tell City High School, graduating in 1970. He worked for two years as a sportswriter for the Tell City News. In addition to having published numerous scholarly articles, he is also a singer-songwriter and has released three albums of his own material.
Emilia Rosa
Emilia Rosa was raised in Brazil. During her childhood she lived in Rio de Janeiro, where every sunny weekend was generally spent at the beach. Having moved to South of Brazil, she holds fond memories of summer vacations spent with her married sister in Rio, which also involved many hours at the beach. Her love for the sea and Rio de Janeiro, as well as that city’s history, permeates the pages of her first fiction book, “Finding Cristina.” During her teens she avidly read in Portuguese, Spanish, English, French and Italian. A few years ago she developed a love for murder mysteries written during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Emilia moved back to the United States several years ago. She has published poetry and is finishing Finding Cristina: A New Life, the sequel to Finding Cristina. Her readers can contact her on Facebook/Instagram/Goodreads (Emilia Rosa Author), and Twitter (EmliaURosa1).