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!
Trudy Krisher
Trudy Krisher is an award-winning author of young adult novels, children’s picture books, and a scholarly biography. Her recent biography, Fanny Seward: A Life, won a Silver Medal from the Independent Publishers Association. Awards for her historical novels for young adults include the International Reading Association Award, a Jefferson Cup Honor Award, the American Library Association Best Books award, and many others. She has spoken at many local, regional, and national forums including the American Library Association, The National Conference of Teachers of English, and the New York Public Library. She is a retired professor from the Department of Liberal Arts, Communication, and Social Sciences at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. She currently hosts a public access television show in Dayton, Ohio called “The Writer’s Nook.” She has been featured as part of the Dayton region’s PBS-TV initiative “The Great American Read.” You can learn more about her at http://www.trudykrisherauthor.com.
Education: B.A., College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
M.Ed., College of New Jersey, Trenton, New Jersey
Selected Publications:
Bark Park. Children’s Picture Book. Simon & Schuster/Beach Lane Books, 2019.
Fanny Seward: A Life. Biography. Syracuse University Press. 2015.
“An Affectionate Farewell”: The Story of Old Bob and Old Abe. Children’s picture book. Bunker Hill Publishing. 2015.
Fallout: A Novel. Young Adult Novel. New York: Holiday House. 2006.
Uncommon Faith: A Novel. Young Adult Novel. New York: Holiday House. 2003.
“We Loved Lucy.” Short Story solicited for Time Capsule: Short Stories about Teenagers throughout the Twentieth Century, edited by Don Gallo, New York, Delacorte Press, 1999. Laurel Leaf paperback released through Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York, 2001.
Kinship: A Novel. Young Adult Novel. Random House. 1997. Laurel Leaf paperback released through Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York, 1999. Audio recording from Recorded Books, 2001.
Writing for a Reader: Peers, Process, and Progress in the Writing Classroom. College Writing Textbook. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 1994.
Spite Fences: A Novel. Young Adult Novel. New York: Delacorte. 1994. Norwegian rights acquired by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1997. Laurel Leaf paperback released through Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York, 1996. Audio recording from Recorded Books, 2000.
Kathy’s Hats: A Story of Hope. Children’s Picture Book. Chicago: Albert Whitman & Company, 1992. Japanese rights acquired by Hyoronsha, Tokyo, Japan, 1997.
The Writer’s Image: Literary Photographs by Jill Krementz. Introduction by Kurt Vonnegut. Preface by Trudy Krisher. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
Robert Kroeger
Dr. Robert Kroeger, a native of Youngstown, graduated from Ohio State University’s College of Dentistry, served four years of active duty in the US Navy, ending with the rank of lieutenant commander. He and his late wife Brenda moved to Cincinnati where they raised five children and Dr. Kroeger practiced general dentistry from 1977 to 2010, when he retired. He and his wife Laura also live in Cincinnati, where they enjoy spending time with nine grandchildren. [INSERT IMAGE A-63 CAPTION: Robert Kroeger. Photograph, David Bimschleger] Dr. Kroeger is a second-generation artist, though, unlike his father Francis, who held an art degree from Notre Dame, his professional art career blossomed later in life. Though he did not immediately follow in his father’s footsteps, Robert’s career as a dentist allowed him to study color values and facial esthetic principles in smile design. He is the author of Historic Barns of Ohio, a book that features a barn, its painting, and its essay in each of Ohio’s 88 counties. Dr. Kroeger has also written two books on dentistry and seven books on golf in Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland, including To The 14th Tee, The Links of Wales, The Golf Courses of Old Tom Morris, Golf on the Links of Ireland, Golf on the Links of England, Complete Guide to the Golf Courses of Scotland, and The Secrets of Islay. This is his second book on old barns but hopefully not his last. Learn more at: https://www.barnart.weebly.com/
Lisa Krok
Lisa Krok, MLIS, MEd, is the adult and teen services manager at Morley Library in the Cleveland, Ohio, area and a former teacher. She is a regular presenter at the Virginia Hamilton Multicultural Literature Conference, and her passion is reaching marginalized teens and reluctant readers through young adult literature. Krok was appointed to the 2019-2020 YALSA Presidential Advisory Task Force. In January of 2020, she will begin her appointment on the Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA) 2021 committee. Krok was also selected for the 2018 and 2019 Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers teams, which earned her a 2018 YALSA Volunteer of the Year Award. She writes for School Library Journal’s Teen Librarian Toolbox and has also blogged for American Libraries magazine and YALSA’s The Hub.
John W. Kropf
John Kropf is the author of Unknown Sands: Journeys Around the World’s Most Isolated Country that Publisher’s Weekly praised as a fascinating narrative bound to hook adventurers. His writing has appeared in appeared The Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Kropf was born in Sandusky and raised in Erie County, Ohio. He is an attorney in the Washington, DC. area. http://compulsivelyaimless.blogspot.com/
Nan Kuhlman
Nan Kuhlman is an author, freelance writer, and part-time university professor who lives in Los Angeles but still thinks of rural northwest Ohio as home. Her nonfiction book Nontraditional: Life Lessons from a Community College tells of her time spent as an adjunct writing professor at a small community college there and intertwines the stories of her nontraditional students with her own nontraditional start in higher education. The lesson of Nontraditional is about life’s circuitous nature and how the indirect way may be the best route to get where you need to go.
Nan currently works as a technical writer in Los Angeles, but because her freelancing career has spanned more than two decades, she can’t break her streak and continues to freelance in her free time. You can read her eclectic collection of writing at http://www.nankuhlman.com.
Jillian Kuhlmann
Jillian Kuhlmann spent her formative years feeding her overactive imagination with The X-Files and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
She grew up on a farm, leaving many library books out in the rain and playing pioneer after she read (a lot of) Laura Ingalls Wilder. Writing stories with her best friend during her adolescence was preferable to admitting that there wasn’t any such thing as fairies or actually mustering up the courage to talk to boys.
After receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and English Literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 2006 and her Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati in 2008, Jillian lost herself in writing the first of many drafts of The Hidden Icon. Between edits she got married and had a baby (both of these things were awesome; the editing, not so much).
Though she still toys with short fiction and flash fiction, novel-length fiction has always been her favorite to write and to read. Juliet Marillier’s Son of the Shadows is easily her favorite book of all time.
She lives with her husband, their two daughters, and a wicked costume collection in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Barbara Kussow
Barbara Kussow is the author of a novel, PORTRAIT OF ANNIE, and two novellas, THE SPENCERS OF OHIO; AN ABOLITIONIST FAMILY IN THE CIVIL WAR ERA and THE MERLIN SUBSIDIARY. She is a contributor to WRITING AFTER RETIREMENT (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014; ed. by Carol Smallwood and Christine Redman-Waldeyer). Poetry and short stories have been published in several print and online venues; book reviews and book columns have appeared in local papers. She edited and published Still Crazy, a literary magazine that published works written by and/or about people over age 50, from 2008-2017.Barbara’s education includes a B.S. and M.Ed. in English Education at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and an M.L.S. from Kent State University, Ohio.
Stephen Kuusisto
Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a professorship in the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.