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.

  • The results are being filtered by the character: W
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
Photo of Tim Waggoner

Tim Waggoner

Shirley Jackson Award finalist Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections of dark fiction. Waggoner wrote his first story at the age of five, when he created a comic book version of King Kong vs. Godzilla on a stenographer’s pad. It took him a few more years until he began selling professionally, though.…Read More

Shirley Jackson Award finalist Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections of dark fiction. Waggoner wrote his first story at the age of five, when he created a comic book version of King Kong vs. Godzilla on a stenographer’s pad. It took him a few more years until he began selling professionally, though. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. He hopes to continue writing and teaching until he keels over dead, after which he wants to be stuffed and mounted, and then placed in front of his computer terminal. For more ifnformation about Waggoner, check out his website at timwaggoner.com.

Photo of Sara Moore Wagner

Sara Moore Wagner

Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors' Prize for her manuscript Swan Wife (expected late summer 2022). She the author of the poetry manuscript Hillbilly Madonna (2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript prize winner), a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Sixth Finch, Waxwing, Nimrod, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others.…Read More

Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize for her manuscript Swan Wife (expected late summer 2022). She the author of the poetry manuscript Hillbilly Madonna (2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript prize winner), a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Sixth Finch, Waxwing, Nimrod, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. She lives in West Chester Ohio with her husband Jon, and children Cohen, Daisy, and Vivienne. Learn more at: https://www.saramoorewagner.com/

Photo of Thomas E Wagner

Thomas E Wagner

Thomas E. Wagner is a university professor emeritusin the School of Planningat the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of books and articles on regional history, collective bargaining, and citizen participation.Read More

Thomas E. Wagner is a university professor emeritusin the School of Planningat the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of books and articles on regional history, collective bargaining, and citizen participation.

Photo of Christina Wald

Christina Wald

Christina Wald is a product designer and illustrator in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has illustrated over 50 picture books and is obsessed with urban sketching and travel. She started out illustrating professionally for games including the Star Wars role playing game series, Middle Earth: Wizards, A Lord of the Rings collectable card game, Dragon Magazine, BattleTech, Dune and many others.…Read More

Christina Wald is a product designer and illustrator in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has illustrated over 50 picture books and is obsessed with urban sketching and travel.

She started out illustrating professionally for games including the Star Wars role playing game series, Middle Earth: Wizards, A Lord of the Rings collectable card game, Dragon Magazine, BattleTech, Dune and many others.

One of her latest books, Cao Chong Weighs and Elephant by Songju Ma Daemicke, recently was given an NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book Award, included on the NSTA Best STEM Books list for 2018, and recieved a Mathical Award. Other recent highlights include: Paws, Hoofs, and Wings Animal Heroes of  the San Diego Zoo by Shari Lyon, the official children’s book to celebrate the zoo’s 2016 centennial, Camas and Sage: A Story of Bison Life on the Prairie by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent for the American Prairie Reserve ; The Wild Life of Elk by Donna Love (A joint venture between the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the National Forest Service) and many others.

Many of her books are about animals and ecosystems and she often travels and consults with scientists for research.

She has done toy design development for National Geographic, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Discovery Kids. She even has done an occasional animation background and package art for GI Joe. She is currently developing a graphic novel.

She started urban sketching in 2011 and helps coordinate the Cincinnati chapter and is on the social media team of the international organization.

She graduated from the University of Cincinnati DAAP with a degree in Industrial Design and teaches illustration at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University.

Photo of Corrinne Walker

Corrinne Walker

Corrinne Walker, a certified life coach, and motivational speaker helps individuals understand that life experiences that hurt do not always mean that they are wrong. That everyone has the power to choose to see difficulties as signs that a few battles need to take place, that there is a need to clear some personal obstacles, so some space can be created for answers, light, and love to enter their life.…Read More

Corrinne Walker, a certified life coach, and motivational speaker helps individuals understand that life experiences that hurt do not always mean that they are wrong. That everyone has the power to choose to see difficulties as signs that a few battles need to take place, that there is a need to clear some personal obstacles, so some space can be created for answers, light, and love to enter their life.

Also Corrinne Walker is the writer of Corrinne Walker is out of this world part I and II, Lashonna Cargin Dealing with OCD Revised Edition, and Lashonna Cargin Dividived, Lashonna Cargin Dealing With OCD part I and II, Lashonna Cargin Dealing With OCD part I and II combined and last Adventures of Sneaky & Lashonna.

You can visit her website at https://walker-and-associate-life-coaching.business.site

R. L. Walker

R.L. Walker hopes her strong female characters will encourage her students to not only write, but to follow their dreams solving mysteries, uncovering archaeological secrets, and to keep going even in the face of adversity. R.L.Walker has always dreamed up stories and adventures while out adventuring while working on an archaeological dig in college or while traveling in the family business, a food concessions in the carnival.…Read More

R.L. Walker hopes her strong female characters will encourage her students to not only write, but to follow their dreams solving mysteries, uncovering archaeological secrets, and to keep going even in the face of adversity. R.L.Walker has always dreamed up stories and adventures while out adventuring while working on an archaeological dig in college or while traveling in the family business, a food concessions in the carnival. She grew up in Lithopolis, Ohio and left to teach English in South Korea. Since then she has been teaching Reading and Writing in Chillicothe City Schools and now in Southwestern City Schools. To help motivate her students to write she started sharing her writing with them and even made a goal to finish a novel by the end of the school. After a fun year of getting the students involved she has been writing since. Now she has started a writing club with her students after school to help those students who have an interest in writing and hopes to have them publish their own novels on Amazon by the end of the year. The Disappearing Act, her first novel, is a mystery set in the carnival. R.L. Walker drew on her childhood experiences to help write the novel, but claims that to her knowledge there were no kidnappers and she does not have telepathic abilities. Despite her students thinking her main character, Zoe, was based on herself. She is following up on Zoe’s adventures with a second novel, Crimival. In this novel, Zoe’s telepathic powers take her Gibtown, Florida to solve a crime of sabatoge and intrigue. Kai’s Secret, her second novel, is a mystery set on an archaeological dig. Amazon reviewers have likened it to the “Da Vinci Code” and many enjoy going on an Indiana Jones style adventure with Kai as she uses her shapeshifting abilities to hopefully crack the case of artifacts being stolen and their connection to her parent’s disappearance years ago.
Both books are available on Amazon, Wheatberry Books, and The Local Talent Marketplace

Follow her adventures on Instagram, look for book signings and writing classes for kids
https://www.instagram.com/r.l.walker88author/ or on Facebook: R.L.Walker and The Disappearing Act

Photo of Laura Maylene Walter

Laura Maylene Walter

Laura Maylene Walter is a writer and editor in Cleveland. Her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, The Masters Review, and many other publications. She has been a Tin House Scholar, a recipient of the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant, and a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, the Chautauqua Institution, and Art Omi: Writers.…Read More

Laura Maylene Walter is a writer and editor in Cleveland. Her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, The Masters Review, and many other publications. She has been a Tin House Scholar, a recipient of the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant, and a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, the Chautauqua Institution, and Art Omi: Writers. Laura works as a writer and editor for Cleveland Public Library, serves as editor-in-chief of Literary Cleveland’s Gordon Square Review, and blogs for the Kenyon Review. Body of Stars is her first novel.

Photo of David Wanczyk

David Wanczyk

I am a nonfiction writer (Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind) and literary journal editor (New Ohio Review), and I have taught English at Ohio University for the last 13 years. After studying at Holy Cross, I got my Masters in Poetry and Ph.D.…Read More

I am a nonfiction writer (Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind) and literary journal editor (New Ohio Review), and I have taught English at Ohio University for the last 13 years. After studying at Holy Cross, I got my Masters in Poetry and Ph.D. in Creative Nonfiction at OU in Athens, where I continue to live with my wife Megan, my daughter, Natalie, my son, Benjamin, and the family heirloom—an autographed Pedro Martinez hat.

I’ve published somewhat widely, with poems in a dozen journals and essays in another half-dozen, and a couple scholarly articles about British fiction. In 2009, I began writing about unorthodox sports, which led to pieces in SalonSlate, and theclassical.org, and eventually brought me in contact with Beep Baseball, or baseball for the blind.

 

In 2012, I watched my first Beep Baseball game, and I have followed the National Beep Baseball Association consistently ever since, reporting on the annual World Series and on the ups and downs of blind ballplayers for the Boston Globe MagazineTexas Monthly, and Hobart. Some of the players came to call me “Book Dave,” and I’m happy to have that book, after quite a few years of revision, forthcoming from Ohio University’s Swallow Press.

Growing up in Western Massachusetts, I was a natural and diehard Red Sox fan, and I fancied myself a great young prospect. One Saturday morning, though, I gave up 27 runs in an inning, and (very slowly) I came to recognize that my future in sports was going to depend on a pen rather than a bat. While following Beep Baseball, I found that what I’m really interested in is the underdog story, and the search for unexpected, uncanny glory. While I covered those topics—once speaking about them on Taiwanese radio—I eventually realized that my obsessive interest in the sport was a way for me to think about the rigors of young parenthood, too, and about the role impracticality can play, and maybe needs to play, in my life.

​Through my interviews with approximately 100 participants, and my travels to three countries to meet Beep Ballers, I developed a rapport with the players and sought only to tell an engaging story about them that refused to pigeonhole or patronize.

Photo of Andrea Wang

Andrea Wang

Andrea Wang is an acclaimed author of children’s books. Her picture book Watercress was awarded the Caldecott Medal, a Newbery Honor, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the Ohioana Book Award, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, among other accolades. Her other books, The Many Meanings of Meilan, Luli and the Language of Tea, Magic Ramen, and The Nian Monster, have also received awards and starred reviews.…Read More

Andrea Wang is an acclaimed author of children’s books. Her picture book Watercress was awarded the Caldecott Medal, a Newbery Honor, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the Ohioana Book Award, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, among other accolades. Her other books, The Many Meanings of Meilan, Luli and the Language of Tea, Magic Ramen, and The Nian Monster, have also received awards and starred reviews. Her work explores culture, creative thinking, and identity. She lives in Colorado with her family. For more information about Andrea and her books, visit  https://andreaywang.com/.

 

Photo of Lindsay Ward

Lindsay Ward

Lindsay Ward has a BFA in Illustration from Syracuse University. Her most recent books include the Amazon Bestselling Dexter T. Rexter series: Don’t Forget Dexter!, It’s Show and Tell, Dexter!, and Vacation for Dexter! with Two Lions. She is also the author and illustrator of This Book Is Gray (Two Lions, 2019), Let’s Go! (HarperCollins, 2019), Brobarians (Two Lions, 2017), The Importance of Being 3 (Dial, 2016), Rosco vs.…Read More

Lindsay Ward has a BFA in Illustration from Syracuse University. Her most recent books include the Amazon Bestselling Dexter T. Rexter series: Don’t Forget Dexter!, It’s Show and Tell, Dexter!, and Vacation for Dexter! with Two Lions. She is also the author and illustrator of This Book Is Gray (Two Lions, 2019), Let’s Go! (HarperCollins, 2019), Brobarians (Two Lions, 2017), The Importance of Being 3 (Dial, 2016), Rosco vs. the Baby (S&S, 2016), Henry Finds His Word (Dial, 2015), a Choose to Read Ohio Book, When Blue Met Egg (Dial, 2012), and Please Bring Balloons (Dial, 2013), which was produced into a play by the New York City Children’s Theater in 2017. Her work has been reviewed in Kirkus Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, and the New York Times. Lindsay is the founder of Critter Lit, a free picture book manuscript and illustration critique service for up-and-coming authors and illustrators. Lindsay lives in Peninsula, Ohio with her husband, author Frank Tupta, two sons, and dog. Visit her online at lindsaymward.com or follow her on twitter @lindsaymward.