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.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

TJ Turner

TJ Turner is an aspiring novelist, research scientist for the US Air Force, and a Federal Agent as a reserve member of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He graduated from Cornell University, where his love of writing was almost snuffed out by a 350 page doctoral dissertation. After rekindling his passion for the writing life he has written three novels, the most recent being Lincoln’s Bodyguard (due out from Oceanview Publishing in April 2015).…Read More

As a reserve military officer, the federal government as generously provided him with numerous overseas vacations at taxpayer expense, where during his most recent deployment his love of writing was almost snuffed out again, this time by a 107mm rocket fashioned into a crudely made roadside bomb. In 2013 he was awarded a Bronze Star for combat action in Afghanistan, including the capture of 16 insurgents and the neutralization of 12 weapons caches. An essay he wrote for about his deployments to Afghanistan—The Power of Teddy Bears—was accepted and read on NPR’s This I Believe national essay series. He also serves as the vice-president of the Antioch Writer’s Workshop in Yellow Springs, OH.

Judith Turner-Yamamoto

Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s debut novel LOVING THE DEAD AND GONE, a Mariel Hemingway Book Club pick, won the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Southern Regional Fiction. The North Carolina Society of Historians recognized Loving the Dead and Gone with the 2023 Historical Novel Award. The book was shortlisted for the 2023 UC-Berkeley Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize, where it was also an honorable mention in General Fiction and finalist for the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award for Debut Fiction. Her novel, The Drawing of Angels, is currently shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writers Project Book Award. Her publications include StorySOUTH, Mississippi Review, Deep South, and American Literary Review, and many anthologies. Judith’s other awards include an Ohio Arts Council fellowship, two Virginia Arts Commission fellowships, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, the Washington Prize for Fiction, VCCA residency, and the Virginia Screenwriting Award. An art historian, her many articles have appeared in Elle, Travel & Leisure, AARP, and the Los Angeles Times, and her interviews have aired on NPR affiliate WVXU. A Kentucky Humanities Speakers Bureau scholar, Judith is a frequent presenter at conferences and book festivals including the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, Chautauqua Institution and the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. She has taught at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, Chautauqua Institution, the Writers’ Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and the Danville, VA Writers Conference. She lives on the Ohio/Kentucky border where her love of travel and place continues to inspire her writing.

Learn more at http://www.turneryamamoto.com. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Jane Ann Turzillo

Jane Ann Turzillo is the author of ten books. She has been nominated twice for the Agatha for Wicked Women of Ohio and Unsolved Murders & Disappearances in Northeast Ohio. She is also a National Federation of Press Women award-winner for Wicked Cleveland, Ohio Train Disasters, and others. A full-time author and speaker, she concentrates on true crime and history. Her current book is Northern Ohio Cold Cases. As one of the original owners of a large weekly newspaper, she covered police, fire and hard news. Visit her website at http://www.janeannturzillo.com.

Tara Tyler

Tara Tyler has had a hand in everything from waitressing to rocket engineering. After moving all over the US, she now writes and teaches math in Ohio with her husband and one boy left in the nest. She has two novel series, Pop Travel (sci-fi detective thrillers) and Beast World (fantasy adventures), plus her UnPrincess novella series where the damsels save themselves. She’s a commended blogger, contributed to several anthologies, and to fit all these projects in, she economizes her time, aka the Lazy Housewife—someday she might write a book on that… Make every day an adventure!

Doreen Uhas Sauer

Doreen Uhas Sauer serves as Board President for Columbus Landmarks Foundation and on a number of boards in the University District, where she is active in historic preservation, urban issues and local history. A longtime Columbus educator with Columbus City Schools, she currently directs a Teaching American History grant and has worked extensively in international civic education. She has received statewide recognition for her work in preservation education, developed more than thirty local history/architecture programs and was named Ohio Teacher of the Year in 2003.

Thrity Umrigar

Thrity Umrigar is the bestselling author of nine previous novels, including Honor, which was a Reese's Book Club Pick, as well as three picture books and a memoir. Her books have been published in over fifteen countries and in several languages. A former journalist, she has contributed to The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The New York Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and other newspapers.…Read More

Thrity Umrigar is the bestselling author of nine previous novels, including Honor, which was a Reese’s Book Club Pick, as well as three picture books and a memoir. Her books have been published in over fifteen countries and in several languages. A former journalist, she has contributed to The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The New York Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and other newspapers. She is a recipient of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, and winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Seth Rosenberg prize and a Lambda Literary award. She is currently a Distinguished University Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. https://umrigar.com/

Richard Underwood

Richard H. Underwood, American legal scholar and legal nonfiction and true crime writer, is the Edward T. Breathitt Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. His most recent book is Gaslight Lawyers: Criminal Trials & Exploits in Gilded Age New York. He is also the author of CrimeSong: True Crime Stories from Southern Murder Ballads (2016), the recipient of two IPPY Book of the Year Awards and winner of a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award (Bronze, True Crime).…Read More

Underwood was born in Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up and attended college and law school. He graduated summa cum laude from The Ohio State University in 1969 and then entered the army. He served four years, with tours of duty in Germany and Vietnam, and later served as the security officer at the Presidio of San Francisco. Underwood left the army with the rank of captain, and he received a number of decorations, including the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Bronze Star. He then attended the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. After law school, Richard Underwood served as a law clerk for the Honorable David S. Porter, a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, in Cincinnati. He practiced several years with the law firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease in Columbus, Ohio, before taking a teaching position at the College of Law, University of Kentucky.

Professor Underwood has made many presentations, including a Musicology lecture, “Murdered Girls,” dealing with legal cases memorialized in Southern murder ballads, at the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music (2011), in addition to lectures at the Second World Conference on New Trends in Criminal Investigation and Evidence (1999) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the Worldwide Advocacy Conference (1998) at the Inns of Court School of Law, in London, England. In 2011, Underwood presented at the Bob Dylan and the Law Symposium, co-sponsored by the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, Touro Law Center, and the Fordham Urban Law Journal, in New York City.

He has taught a variety of courses, including Evidence, Scientific and Forensic Evidence, Litigation Skills (Trial Advocacy), Civil Procedure, Federal Courts, Insurance Law, Remedies, Law and Medicine, Bioethics, and Professional Responsibility (Legal Ethics). His legal publications include many law review articles, and he is the co-author of three legal practice books. Professor Richard Underwood has received special awards from the Kentucky Supreme Court for his work on the Kentucky Rules of Professional Conduct (1989) and for his service as the chairman of the Kentucky Bar Association Ethics and Unauthorized Practice Committees (1998).

Carmella Van Vleet

Carmella Van Vleet is a former teacher who has been a full-time author for over 20 years. She's the author of over a dozen books, both fiction and non-fiction, for kids of all ages. Her debut middle grade novel, Eliza Bing Is (Not) A Big Fat Quitter, received the Christopher Award and was featured on multiple state award lists, including Choose to Read Ohio.…Read More

Carmella Van Vleet is a former teacher who has been a full-time author for over 20 years. She’s the author of over a dozen books, both fiction and non-fiction, for kids of all ages. Her debut middle grade novel, Eliza Bing Is (Not) A Big Fat Quitter, received the Christopher Award and was featured on multiple state award lists, including Choose to Read Ohio. And her recent middle grade, Nothing Is Little, was a 2023 Ohioana Book Award finalist. She also co-authored the picture book To the Stars! The First American Woman to Walk in Space (co-authored with astronaut Kathy Sullivan). Carmella lives in Columbus, Ohio. She can be found online at: https://carmellavanvleet.com/.

Jeannie Vanasco

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl (2019) and The Glass Eye (2017). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Believer, Lit Hub, The New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she now lives in Baltimore and is an assistant professor of English at Towson University.Read More

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl (2019) and The Glass Eye (2017). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Believer, Lit Hub, The New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she now lives in Baltimore and is an assistant professor of English at Towson University.

J. D. Vance

J. D. Vance is an author and venture capitalist known for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. The book is about the Appalachian values of his upbringing and their relation to the social problems of his hometown. Hillbilly Elegy is the winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award About Ohio/An Ohioan.Read More

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