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.
Mary Ann Winkowski
Mary Ann Winkowski was born in Cleveland, Ohio and has been communicating with earthbound spirits for most of her life. Her earliest memories include talking to spirits of the deceased as if they were living people and helping these entities cross over into the White Light.
Over the course of work as a paranormal investigator, Mary Ann’s reputation has spread. She is a consultant to the CBS hit television show Ghost Whisperer, has appeared on numerous TV and radio news programs, and spoken at countless lectures. What once she between raising two daughters, foster parenting, and pet grooming has now become a fulltime vocation.
Still living and working primarily in the Cleveland area, Mary Ann has offered her abilities to those in need as far away as New Mexico, St. Lucia, and Scotland. In When Ghosts Speak: Understanding the World of Earthbound Spirits (Grand Central Publishing, October 2007) Mary Ann shares a lifetime’s worth of information about the spirit world and reveals her often surprising interactions with some memorable ghosts.
Mary Ann shows the human side of the paranormal — stories about ghosts told from the perspectives of the ghosts themselves – and teaches us how we can coexist peaceably with the spirits that surround us.
Unlike the sensationalized tales of most ghost lore, When Ghosts Speak presents real stories of troubled people — both the living and the dead — not simply the terror of sinister paranormal manifestations served up by horror novels and Hollywood.
Mary Ann offers lessons on death and the immortality of the spirit that only someone who can actually speak with the deceased could teach. Her abilities have offered solace to countless people, either by reuniting them with loved ones who have died or by removing unwanted spirits and negative energy from homes, businesses or possessions.
Eric Wittenberg
Eric J. Wittenberg is a lifelong Philadelphia Phillies fan and native of southeastern Pennsylvania. Having grown up in the early 1970s, he understands losing baseball teams. He is a lawyer in private practice and an award-winning Civil War historian. He and his wife Susan reside in Columbus, Ohio, where he struggles to follow his beloved Phillies.
Lucy S. Wolfe
Lucy S. Wolfe is a lifelong resident of Columbus, a realtor, and a member of the board of trustees of the Columbus Historical Society.
TG Wolff
TG Wolff writes mysteries that play in the gray area between good and bad, right and wrong. She creates puzzles, meant to be solved. Diverse characters mirror the complexities of real life and real people, balanced with a healthy dose of entertainment. TG Wolff holds a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering and is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime.
James M. Wood
James M. Wood is an award-winning journalist, former about-town columnist for Cleveland Magazine, and author of four books on Cleveland social history: Halle’s: Memoirs of a Family Department Store, One Hundred Twenty-Five, Helen’s Twentieth Century, and The Tavern.
Teresa Woodard
Teresa Woodard wrote the new garden book, “American Roots.” She also is contributing garden editor at Midwest Living, where she covers everything from houseplants and bonsai to daffodils and peonies. A lifelong Ohioan (except for her college days studying journalism at Indiana University), she gardens on 2 acres outside Columbus. She also teaches youth about growing food at Highland Youth Garden in Columbus and serves as an advisor with America in Bloom. Learn more at: https://www.teresawoodard.com/
Scott Woods
Scott Woods is a writer and event organizer in Columbus, Ohio. Woods is the author of Urban Contemporary History Month (2016), We Over Here Now (2013), Prince and Little Weird Black Boy Gods (2017), and Black Night is Falling (2024). He has been featured multiple times in national press, including appearances on National Public Radio. He is the founder of Streetlight Guild, a performing arts non-profit, a 2018 Columbus Foundation Spirit of Columbus Award recipient, as well as the Greater Columbus Arts Council winner of the 2017 Columbus Makes Art Excellence Award for his event series, “Holler: 31 Days of Columbus Black Art”. Woods was named the first-ever “Face of Columbus” by Columbus Alive. He is the 2022 winner of the Press Club of Cleveland’s Ohio Excellence in Journalism award for Best in Ohio Essay Writing, and was awarded “Best Columnist in Ohio” in 2023 by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists. He is the co-founder of the Writers’ Block Poetry Night. In 2020 he won an Ohio Valley Regional Emmy Award for contributions to A House That Cannot Fail. In 2006 became the first poet to ever complete a 24-hour solo poetry reading; a feat he bested seven more times without repeating a single poem.
Donte Woods-Spikes
Donte Woods-Spikes began working with youth in the Near Eastside of Columbus Ohio in 2011.
His first youth project, A Talk With Our Sons consisted of youtube video interviews with young
Black male youth and life experiences within the city. As the project gained recognition,
Woods-Spikes was selected to give a TEDxColumbus Talk titled Young Black Men Not Left Out
Again.
Woods-Spikes also mentors young children. He created a documentary titled Donte &
Day’Mariah, which highlighted his journey mentoring a young Black girl and the dynamics and
benefits of cross gendered mentorship.
Woods-Spikes worked at a community center then transitioned into the columbus city schools
as a teachers aid for 3 years. 1 of those years taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic
which inspired him to write his book So. Long. Unfinished Good-byes with the Children of
COVID-19. His time is now devoted to professional development and contract work with schools
to create diverse inclusive environments for all children.
Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson (jacquelinewoodson.com) is the author of more than thirty books for young people and adults including Another Brooklyn, Red At The Bone, and The Day You Begin. She received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a 2023 E. B. White Award, a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. Her books for young readers include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin, and Harbor Me, Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, After Tupac and D Foster, and Each Kindness. In 2018, she founded BALDWIN FOR THE ARTS (https://baldwinforthearts.org), a residency serving writers, composers, interdisciplinary, and visual artists of the Global Majority. Her most recent novel, Remember Us, is set in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
Jennifer Wortman
Jennifer Wortman is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love (Split Lip Press, 2019). Her fiction, essays, and poetry appear in TriQuarterly, Copper Nickel, Glimmer Train, Electric Literature, Brevity, Hobart, North American Review, Juked, and elsewhere. A native of Gambier, Ohio, she currently lives with her family in Colorado, where she serves as associate fiction editor for Colorado Review and teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop.