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.
Laura Taxel
Laura Taxel is an award-winning journalist and author. At twenty-one, she earned a favorable review in the New York Times. Her most recent book, Cleveland’s West Side Market: 100 Years & Still Cooking, coauthored with Marilou Suszko, was published by the University of Akron Press in 2012. After more than forty years, she is still thrilled to have a career telling stories.
Christine Taylor-Butler
A native of Cleveland Ohio, Christine Taylor-Butler is the author of more than eighty books and short stories for children including Rosa Parks (Scholastic), the award winning “Sacred Mountain: Everest” (Lee and Low), and a middle grade science fiction adventure series The Lost Tribes (Move Books). Although she’s always wanted to be a writer, Christine was encouraged by her math teacher to try her hand at engineering. As a result, and always an overachiever, Christine holds dual degrees in Civil Engineering and Art & Design from MIT. Still the tug to write was too great. Now she’s known as much for her science writing as her fiction. To learn more visit:
Dylan Taylor-Lehman
D.M. Testa
A deeply held fascination for events from the past along with a childhood spent
sliding across the marble floors of a bank John Dillinger robbed in Bluffton, Ohio
provides much of my inspiration for Defending the Dillinger Gang: Jessie Levy
and Bess Robbins in the Courtroom.
I have a talent for turning up the facts missed by others and am currently using
my investigative skills for the Missing Princes Project sponsored by the Richard
III Society. Over the past years, I’ve provided research for author David C
Greer: God is Merciful-The Colorful Career of John E Egan, Orange Frazer, 2017.
Death Cell Rescue, 2018. Let My People Thrive – Memories of Dayton’s Moses,
- My research has become the basis for Old Case Files, historical
reenactments of murder trials performed by Dayton History to sell-out audiences in
Dayton, Ohio in 2017, 2018, and 2019 performances.
My other activities include docent work at the Susan B Anthony House & Museum
and presentations to local historical societies. I also teach classes on
researching nonfiction and historical fiction for fledgling authors
Thao Thai
Thao Thai is the author of Banyan Moon, the July 2023 Read with Jenna title, Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, and Book of the Month selection. Banyan Moon was also selected by booksellers as an IndieNext pick and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. A recipient of the 2024 Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award, Thao Thai’s work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, WIRED, Elle, Lit Hub, and other publications. She lives in central Ohio with my husband and daughter. Learn more: https://thaowrites.com/
Sam Thomas
Sam Thomas has a PhD in history with a focus on Reformation England and recently leaped from the tenure track into a teaching position at a secondary school near Cleveland, Ohio.
Read MoreSam Thomas has a PhD in history with a focus on Reformation England and recently leaped from the tenure track into a teaching position at a secondary school near Cleveland, Ohio.
Chera Thompson
Chera Thompson was born and raised in California’s San Fernando Valley. She attended Kent State University and has a BS in Journalism from Ohio University and an MS in Adult Education from Buffalo State College. Her career in travel enabled her to see a lot of the world. Her later career, teaching English as a Second Language to adults, brought her much gratification. Her fiction has been published in the Los Angeles Review and was selected as a finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Fiction Contest. Other publication credits include Let’s Have Fun Vol. 2, Queen City Flash, and Have a NYC 3. Most recently her non-fiction pieces were published in Pamela Des Barres’s Let It Bleed: How to Write a Rockin’ Memoir. She lives with her husband and two dogs in a bluff overlooking Lake Erie and enjoys traveling with their two adult children and collecting beach glass. http://www.cherathompson.com https://www.facebook.com/author.cherathompson/ ATimeToWander@gmail.com (We love hearing our readers thoughts and comments)
A TIME TO WANDER
An email exchange between former college lovers take them back to their college years at Kent State, the 1970’s. The Vietnam War is raging. Anti-war rallies hit the breaking point. It was a time of bell bottoms, vinyl, incense, free love, and travel by thumb. Kris and Lena on May 1, 1970 were strangers on two quite different paths, a thrown beer bottle shatters the lives they have known, bringing them together by chance. Lena is attracted to Kris and his live-in-the-moment personality. When he invites her to join him on a winter break hitchhiking trip, she kicks aside her uptight attitude and accepts the adventure. The trip is harrowing at times, comical during others, and poignant as Lena and Kris learn about themselves and each other. The events that shape and seal the fate of their relationship in unpredictable ways is revealed in the authors’ female/male alternating perspectives. Inspired by true events, A TIME TO WANDER is a magical tale of freedom before the future takes hold.
THE WRITER’S BLOCK INTERVIEW ON LA TALK RADIO https://drive.google.com/…/19Ek-y4eViqfn59N_J0Fl4pr1-…/view…
AKRON BEACON JOURNAL PRESS RELEASE
Medium.com Book Review https://medium.com/@patpendleton/heady-days-6b19b15badba
5 STAR REVIEW BY READER’S FAVORITE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR https://www.amazon.com/gp/customerreviews/R2ZZV3QL6W0PWH/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1625268750
–Teri Case, Author of TIGER DRIVE and IN THE DOGHOUSE
EXCERPT from A TIME TO WANDER
The cursor hovers over the SEND button. I swivel my chair away from the screen and gaze out the window. Slowly I get up from the desk and head toward the attic. Sitting in a cobwebbed corner is my grandmother’s old steamer trunk she gave me when I left for college. I open the lid and catch the faint scent of patchouli. I rummage through sealing wax, sandalwood incense sticks, and tarot cards. There, lying at the bottom… my college journal. I slide my hand over the time-worn cover and open it up, my heart pounding. Should I be doing this? A photo sticks out from between the pages. A long-haired Kris with wire-rimmed glasses, patched jeans and an army jacket stands holding a cardboard sign with the word “Chicago” scrawled in black magic marker. Next to him, a smiling girl flashes the peace sign. Silver hoop earrings peek out from under her long frizzy hair and even in the faded photo, there’s a shine in her eyes. I remember that girl. And that chance meeting in the middle of all the chaos
Cindy Thomson
Known for the inspirational Celtic theme employed in most of her books, Cindy Thomson is the author of six novels and three non-fiction books, including her newest Celtic Son. A genealogy enthusiast, she writes from her home in Ohio where she lives with her husband Tom near their three grown sons and their families. Visit her online at http://www.cindyswriting.com
John Thorndike
John Thorndike grew up in New England, graduated from Harvard, took an MA from Columbia, then lit out for Latin America. He spent two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador and two, with his wife and child, on a backcountry farm in Chile. Eventually he settled with his son in Athens, Ohio, where for ten years his day job was farming. Then it was construction. His first two books were novels, followed by a memoir, Another Way Home, about his wife’s schizophrenia and his life as a single parent (“The directness, the honesty, the terrible plain chant of the narrative stunned me.”—Doris Grumbach.) A second memoir, The Last of His Mind, describes his father’s year-long descent into Alzheimer’s, and was a Washington Post Best Book of 2009. The novel A Hundred Fires in Cuba follows an affair between a young American photographer and one of the heroes of the Cuban Revolution, Camilo Cienfuegos. The World Against Her Skin, Thorndike’s latest book, is a half-fictional evocation of his mother’s life.
Melanie Tienter
Melanie Tienter
is a commercial photographer based in southeast Ohio.
She enjoys oil painting, hanging with her family and her cats, and eating delicious
food.