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.
Mandy Shunnarah
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is a Southern-born, Midwest-loving journalist, essayist, poet, and roller-skating enthusiast who calls Columbus, Ohio home. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Electric Literature, the Rumpus, and more. Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland is their first book. Read more on their website, mandyshunnarah.com
Cristina Sicard
Cristina Sicard, children’s author who brought you the lovable llama Harmony, carries on wanting to help children and adults alike through compelling storytelling. Resembling Cristina’s own battles with mental health, Sábana and Lula are characters she hopes to connect with individuals and elevate diversity and inclusion. To calm her worries, Cristina loves to take walks in the sunshine, laugh at herself and the messages her Dominican family sends in WhatsApp, pose with her gorgeous cat Cloudy, dance in front of mirrors, and work on projects with her out of this world Mami.
Carter Sickels
Carter Sickels is the author of The Prettiest Star (Hub City Press, 2020), winner of the Southern Book Prize, the Ohioana Book Award in Fiction, and the Weatherford Award, and the novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury, 2012). His debut novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury), a 2013 Oregon Book Award finalist and a Lambda Literary Award finalist, was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, Guernica, and Catapult. He lives in Cincinnati.
Eva Siedler
Eva Siedler and her sexy aircraft mechanic husband have built a crazy home in Central Ohio filled with almost as much neurodiversity as love. By day she wrangles two teenage boys with the supernatural ability to misplace anything, her POTS symptoms, and carpools. By night she writes funny, spicy love stories packed with strong, sassy heroines, big-hearted heroes, and tons of wacky small-town shenanigans.
Rox Siles
Rox Siles was born in Bolivia and moved at a young age to the United States. She grew up in Michigan where she got married and attended medical school. She currently works as a physician in Ohio.She developed a passion for writing children’s books after reading bedtime stories with her son. One night, they couldn’t agree on which book to read. It was at that moment they created, “Charlie the Turtle and the Muddy Birthday Cake.” Rox discovered her first illustrator, Monica Kimmell, after seeing her fantastic chalk art drawings on their hometown’s sidewalks. After a recent visit to a local Ohio farm, Rox was inspired to write her first bilingual book, “Paco the Alpaca (Paco la Alpaca) Goes to the Dentist (Va al Dentista.” She knew Martynas Marchiusm would be perfect to bring Paco to life.In her free time, Rox enjoys spending time with her family and their two dogs, Tika and Jazz. Her stories are often influenced by their family adventures and her Spanish heritage. Rox’s goal is to share positive messages with children through her bilingual books.
Marisa Silver
Marisa Silver is an author, screenwriter and film director. She is the winner of the 2017 Fiction Ohioana Book Award for Little Nothing.
Annette Dauphin Simon
Annette Dauphin Simon is the author and illustrator of several books for young readers, including Mocking Birdies and Robot Zombie Frankenstein! A former advertising creative director, she first found spine poetry—or spine poetry found her—as a bookseller in an independent bookshop. A proud parent of two lovely grown humans and one who lives yet in her heart, Annette’s at home in Southport, North Carolina. And any place with a book. Learn more at: https://annettesimon.net/
Dottie Sines
Dottie Sines manages the interlibrary loan department at The College of Wooster, contributes to multiple regional newspapers and magazines, and serves on the board of the Wayne County Historical Society. She has won several awards for her writing, including having twice in recent years been honored as one of ten finalists in the short story contest of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, which published her award-winning stories in the third and fifth editions of its literary journal, Hemingway Shorts. Where the Stars Cross is her first novel.
Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of six novels, including Prep, American Wife, Eligible and Rodham—and one story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her books have been selected by The New York Times, Time, Entertainment Weekly, and People for their “Ten Best Books of the Year” lists, optioned for television and film, and translated into thirty languages. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Esquire, and her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Slate, and on “This American Life.” A Cincinnati native, Curtis now lives in Minneapolis.
Erik Jon Slangerup
Erik Jon Slangerup is the author of Molly and the Machine, Molly and the Mutants, and the first two books of Far Flung Falls, a middle-grade adventure series with Simon & Schuster. He has also written several picture books, including the award-winning Dirt Boy. Erik’s next book, The Intergalactics, will release in 2026. He is based in Columbus, Ohio. Erik is the father of six, which has been his biggest adventure yet. Discover more at http://www.erikjonslangerup.com/.