Ohio 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.
If you would like to know which Ohio authors and illustrators are available for school and library visits or workshops, visit our School & Library Visits page here.
We continue to add authors, so check back soon!
Christopher Bachelder
Chris Bachelder’s fourth novel, The Throwback Special, was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award and the winner of The Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize for humor. His other novels include Abbott Awaits, U.S.!, and Bear v. Shark. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Cincinnati, where he teaches writing at the University of Cincinnati.
Jennifer Bahney
Jennifer Bowers Bahney is an award-winning journalist and newspaper editor with a master’s degree from Northwestern University and a BA in history from Smith College. She has written and produced both local news and internationally for CNN. Her first book, “Stealing Sisi’s Star,” was a finalist for the 2016 Ohioana Book Award in Nonfiction. She lives in central Ohio with her daughter and German Shepherd Dog, Kaiserin Viktoria.
David Baker
David Baker was born in 1954 in Maine, grew up in Missouri, and now lives in Granville, Ohio. He received his B.S.E. and M.A. degrees in English from the University of Central Missouri and his Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah, where he also served from 1980-83 as Editor and Poetry Editor of Quarterly West. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, including twelve books of poetry (Laws of the Land, 1981; Haunts, 1985; Sweet Home, Saturday Night, 1991; After the Reunion, 1994; The Truth about Small Towns, 1998; Changeable Thunder, 2001; Midwest Eclogue, 2005; Treatise on Touch: Selected Poems [UK], 2007; Umul Alchimic [Romania], 2009; Never-Ending Birds, 2009; Scavenger Loop, 2015; Swift: New and Selected Poems (forthcoming in 2019); as well as seven chapbooks.
Baker has seen his individual poems published in the country’s finest journals, including American Poetry Review, Antaeus, The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New Criterion, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, Raritan, The Southern Review, Tin House, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Yale Review. His poetry has been anthologized in The Longman Anthology of Poetry, The Making of a Sonnet, The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and many others. He has won awards and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, Mellon Foundation, Poetry Society of America, Pushcart Prize Foundation, Utah Arts Council, Society of Midland Authors, and Ohioana Library Association. Baker’s articles and critical essays have appeared in The American Book Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New England Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Writers Chronicle, and elsewhere. His six prose volumes are Seek After: Essays on Modern Lyric Poets (2018), Show Me Your Environment: Essays on Poetry, Poets, and Poems (2014); Talk Poetry: Poems and Interviews with Nine American Poets (2012), Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (with Ann Townsend, 2007), Heresy and the Ideal: On Contemporary Poetry (2000), and Meter in English: A Critical Engagement (1996). Baker has taught at Kenyon College, the University of Michigan, the Ohio State University, as well as at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, The Frost Place, Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown), Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Chautauqua Institute, Catskills Poetry Workshop, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops in Italy and Ohio. He is currently Professor of English at Denison University where he holds the Thomas B. Fordham Chair of Creative Writing. He serves regularly on the faculty of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College and is Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.
Bree Baker
David Baker
David Baker was born in 1954 in Maine, grew up in Missouri, and now lives in Granville, Ohio. He received his B.S.E. and M.A. degrees in English from the University of Central Missouri and his Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah, where he also served from 1980-83 as Editor and Poetry Editor of Quarterly West. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, including twelve books of poetry (Laws of the Land, 1981; Haunts, 1985; Sweet Home, Saturday Night, 1991; After the Reunion, 1994; The Truth about Small Towns, 1998; Changeable Thunder, 2001; Midwest Eclogue, 2005; Treatise on Touch: Selected Poems [UK], 2007; Umul Alchimic [Romania], 2009; Never-Ending Birds, 2009; Scavenger Loop, 2015; Swift: New and Selected Poems (forthcoming in 2019); as well as seven chapbooks.
Baker has seen his individual poems published in the country’s finest journals, including American Poetry Review, Antaeus, The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New Criterion, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, Raritan, The Southern Review, Tin House, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Yale Review. His poetry has been anthologized in The Longman Anthology of Poetry, The Making of a Sonnet, The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and many others. He has won awards and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, Mellon Foundation, Poetry Society of America, Pushcart Prize Foundation, Utah Arts Council, Society of Midland Authors, and Ohioana Library Association. Baker’s articles and critical essays have appeared in The American Book Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New England Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Writers Chronicle, and elsewhere. His six prose volumes are Seek After: Essays on Modern Lyric Poets (2018), Show Me Your Environment: Essays on Poetry, Poets, and Poems (2014); Talk Poetry: Poems and Interviews with Nine American Poets (2012), Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (with Ann Townsend, 2007), Heresy and the Ideal: On Contemporary Poetry (2000), and Meter in English: A Critical Engagement (1996). Baker has taught at Kenyon College, the University of Michigan, the Ohio State University, as well as at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, The Frost Place, Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown), Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Chautauqua Institute, Catskills Poetry Workshop, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops in Italy and Ohio. He is currently Professor of English at Denison University where he holds the Thomas B. Fordham Chair of Creative Writing. He serves regularly on the faculty of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College and is Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.
Tom Barlow
Tom Barlow’s stories may be found in the science-fiction novel I’ll See You Yesterday and the literary short story collection Welcome to the Goat Rodeo, as well as in several anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013 and Best New Writing 2011. His work has also appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Redivider, Temenos, The Apalachee Review, Hobart, Needle, The William and Mary Review, and Hiss Quarterly.
Rebecca Barnhouse
Rebecca writes books about—and inspired by—the Middle Ages. She earned her doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and medieval literature written in Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and other fascinating languages. A native of Vero Beach, Florida, she now lives in Ohio, where is a professor of English at Youngstown State University.
When she was growing up, reading was like breathing to Rebecca. It still is. She loved the Little House books, and fought with her brother over books in the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series. Later, she discovered science fiction and fantasy, from The Lord of the Rings to Arthur C. Clarke to Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea series and many, many other books that she and her best friend shared. They still do.
Photo by Carl Leet