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.
- You are searching within category(ies): 2022
Myrna Stone
Myrna Stone is the author of six full-length books of poetry: The Resurrectionist’s Diary; Luz Bones; In the Present Tense: Portraits of My Father; The Casanova Chronicles; How Else to Love the World; and The Art of Loss, for which she received the 2001 Ohio Poet of the Year Award. She is a two-time Finalist for the Ohioana Book Award, and the recipient of three Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in Poetry, a Full Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, the 2017 New Letters Poetry Prize, and the 2002 Poetry Award from Weber–The Contemporary West. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, among others, and have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Boulevard, Nimrod, and River Styx. Her work has also appeared in nine anthologies, including Flora Poetica: The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse; I Have My Own Song For It: Modern Poems of Ohio; and Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude. Stone is a founding member of The Greenville Poets, based in Greenville, Ohio, where she lives with her husband in an 18th century Rhode Island farmhouse.
Tracy Subisak
Tracy Subisak is the Taiwanese and Polish American author-illustrator of award-winning Jenny Mei Is Sad. She has also illustrated many books, including: This Book Is Not For You!, by Shannon Hale, and Amah Faraway, by Margaret Chiu Greanais. Tracy lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, her dog Lala, and many, many plants. You can visit her online at tracysubisak.com and on Instagram at @tracysubisak.
Sam Subity
Sam Subity loves writing stories that explore the magic and wonder of being a kid and is thrilled to share his writing with readers everywhere—both the young in age and the young at heart. When he’s not writing, you might find him running the trails of northern California where the endless, winding miles past fog and ocean inspire stories of adventure and mystery. Or he might be mowing his lawn. Because that’s what adults sometimes have to do. But in either case, Sam is very likely imagining himself fighting mythical creatures or at the prow of a dragon ship feeling the wind and sea spray on his face alongside his own Viking queen and their two Vikelets. His greatest hope is that in reading his books, you too may be transported to another place where, for a little while, you can exchange the ordinary for the extraordinary. https://www.samsubity.com
Joe Sutphin
Joe Sutphin is an illustrator and cartoonist of children’s books and graphic novels. His body of work includes the official graphic novelization of Richard Adams’s masterwork Watership Down, the re-envisioned edition of Helen Taylor’s timeless classic Little Pilgrim’s Progress, Andrew Peterson’s beloved Wingfeather Saga, and many others.…
Read MoreJoe Sutphin is an illustrator and cartoonist of children’s books and graphic novels. His body of work includes the official graphic novelization of Richard Adams’s masterwork Watership Down, the re-envisioned edition of Helen Taylor’s timeless classic Little Pilgrim’s Progress, Andrew Peterson’s beloved Wingfeather Saga, and many others. His love of nature and the living creatures in the fields and woods around his home has informed his art for much of his life. Joe lives in a barn in Ohio with his wife Gina and a bunch of cats.
Don Tassone
After a long career in the corporate world, Don Tassone has returned to his creative writing roots. He is the author of a two novels and seven short story collections. Don and his wife Liz live in Loveland, Ohio. Visit him at https://www.dontassone.com.
John Thorndike
John Thorndike grew up in New England, graduated from Harvard, took an MA from Columbia, then lit out for Latin America. He spent two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador and two, with his wife and child, on a backcountry farm in Chile. Eventually he settled with his son in Athens, Ohio, where for ten years his day job was farming. Then it was construction. His first two books were novels, followed by a memoir, Another Way Home, about his wife’s schizophrenia and his life as a single parent (“The directness, the honesty, the terrible plain chant of the narrative stunned me.”—Doris Grumbach.) A second memoir, The Last of His Mind, describes his father’s year-long descent into Alzheimer’s, and was a Washington Post Best Book of 2009. The novel A Hundred Fires in Cuba follows an affair between a young American photographer and one of the heroes of the Cuban Revolution, Camilo Cienfuegos. The World Against Her Skin, Thorndike’s latest book, is a half-fictional evocation of his mother’s life.
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. 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.
Laura Grace Weldon
Laura Grace Weldon served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books, most recently the Halcyon Poetry Prize winner, Portals. Her poetry and creative nonfiction appear in Diode, Verse Daily, Cultural Weekly, and others. She works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card each week.
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.
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.