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.
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Mike Roos
Mike Roos is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, where he has been employed since 1976. He grew up in southern Indiana and played basketball for Tell City High School, graduating in 1970. He worked for two years as a sportswriter for the Tell City News. In addition to having published numerous scholarly articles, he is also a singer-songwriter and has released three albums of his own material.
Read MoreMike Roos is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, where he has been employed since 1976. He grew up in southern Indiana and played basketball for Tell City High School, graduating in 1970. He worked for two years as a sportswriter for the Tell City News. In addition to having published numerous scholarly articles, he is also a singer-songwriter and has released three albums of his own material.
Emilia Rosa
Emilia Rosa was raised in Brazil. During her childhood she lived in Rio de Janeiro, where every sunny weekend was generally spent at the beach. Having moved to South of Brazil, she holds fond memories of summer vacations spent with her married sister in Rio, which also involved many hours at the beach. Her love for the sea and Rio de Janeiro, as well as that city’s history, permeates the pages of her first fiction book, “Finding Cristina.” During her teens she avidly read in Portuguese, Spanish, English, French and Italian. A few years ago she developed a love for murder mysteries written during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Emilia moved back to the United States several years ago. She has published poetry and is finishing Finding Cristina: A New Life, the sequel to Finding Cristina. Her readers can contact her on Facebook/Instagram/Goodreads (Emilia Rosa Author), and Twitter (EmliaURosa1).
Rafael Rosado
Born in Puerto Rico and based in Columbus, Ohio, Rafael is a seasoned writer, director and storyboard artist for the animation industry. Highly diverse, he has storyboarded on action, comedy and pre-school shows, shows as diverse as Scooby Doo, Transformers, The Batman, Looney Tunes and Curious George.
He’s the co-creator and Illustrator of the graphic novels Giants Beware!, Dragons Beware!, and the upcoming Monsters Beware!, published by First Second Books. His work is featured in the latest edition of the Comics Squad anthology, published by Random House books, and the upcoming
The Latinographix Collection, from OSU Press.
Jerry Roscoe
Jerry Roscoe is the author of Mirror Lake (contained in Two Midwest Voices) which received the Ohioana Book Award for 2002, The Unexamined Life and the chapbook S-E-X. Published widely in literary journals, he has received two Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has had his poems read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. For ten years he was poetry reviewer and columnist for The Columbus Dispatch.
Steven Rosen
Steven Rosen has worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer, Denver Post, Cincinnati CityBeat and other newspapers. Among his assignments, he served as Arts & Culture editor at Cincinnati CityBeat and the art and film critic (and a music writer) at the Denver Post. As a freelancer, he has written for Cincinnati Magazine, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, American Songwriter, Documentary Magazine, IndiWire, Variety, Blurt, Rock & Roll Globe and other outlets. He also founded National One Hit Wonder Day and started a music fanzine called One Shot. He is a member of the Cincinnati Vinyl Club and the Rock & Read Music Book Discussion Group. He holds a Bachelor in General Studies degree from University of Michigan and a Master of Science in Journalism degree from Northwestern University. He and his wife, Mindy, live in Cincinnati. https://www.stevenrosen.net/
Michael J. Rosen
In his various roles, Michael has created more than 150 books over a forty- year career. His wide range of books for young readers range from Chanukah Lights, a poetic collaboration with pop-up master Robert Sabuda (Candlewick) to Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family’s Farm (Darby Creek/Lerner), a 144-page oral history of an Ohio farm family that he photo-chronicled and supplemented with sidebars of local- and natural history.
Many of his books engage his degree in zoology, medical-school training, and his passion for nature and the creatures who share this world. For the last 22 years, he’s lived on 100 forested acres in the foothills of the Appalachians, east of Columbus, Ohio, where he spent most of his life. Workman Publishing released three volumes of heavily researched writing: his comprehensive, go-to-handbook, My Dog! A Kids’ Guide to Keeping a Happy, Healthy Dog; his eco-wise guide to freshwater fishing, Kids’ Book of Fishing; and The 60-Second Encyclopedia, a witty fact- and math-packed compendium of minute-measurements that come from nearly every subject area. Candlewick published four volumes of jos haiku with natural-history endnotes on birds, on cats, on dogs, and on horses. His latest book from Doubleday, In the Quiet, NOISY Woods, is a cumulative sound narrative of eight creatures who share his acres.
Fifteen of his books including SPEAK!, Down to Earth, and The Greatest Table (Harcourt), and Home (HarperCollins) were created with the generosity of hundreds of the country’s best-known illustrators, photographers, authors, and cartoonists as creative philanthropy. Along with several adult books, profits from these collections benefitted Share Our Strength’s work to end childhood hunger and a granting program Rosen created, The Company of Animals Fund, that awarded over $375,000 to 100 animal-welfare organizations.
Among the many distinguished citations his work have received are:
• The Sydney Taylor Book Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries for Chanukah Lights. (Candlewick)
• The inaugural Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance Once Upon a World Book Award for the best children’s book that promotes diversity and tolerance for A School for Pompey Walker. (Harcourt) This is a book-length, first-person narrative based on the true story of a man who repeatedly sold himself into and escaped from slavery in order to build a school for children in Ohio.
• The Ohioana Library Career Citation awarded by the state of Ohio.
• The National Jewish Book Award for Elijah’s Angel, a picture book based on Rosen’s friendship with the renowned folk artist Elijah Pierce.
• Share Our Strength’s first lifetime achievement away for his creative and devotion to ending childhood hunger in America.
Several of his books have been Junior Library Guild featured selections and Scholastic Book Club picks, while others have been featured as “Best Books of the Year” by Kirkus, CCBC, Bank Street Books, Hungry Mind Review, Essence, The Today Show, The Horn Book, Miami Herald, and the ASPCA. His works have been adapted as a PBS documentary (“Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family Farm”); a family opera (composer Robert Kapilow’s “Elijah’s Angel”); and a short film (director Christopher Rowley’s “The Remembering Movies”).
Among his recent books are Sailing the Unknown: Around the World with Captain Cook, a free-verse diary based on the life of a stowaway who sailed aboard the ship Endeavor for over a thousand days. (Creative Editions)
• Mind-Boggling Numbers (Millbrook/Lerner). Ms. Mary Math unpacks a dozen doozies in a humorous, arithmetic ramp through such unlikely story problems as how long would it take to hike to the moon, how many earthworms are in an acre, and how long would it take someone to mow the lawn if everyone on Earth had the same size yard.
• Outrageous Animal Adaptations (Twenty-first Century Books/Lerner), a middle-grade guide to two dozen profiles of creatures who occupy the most extreme, hazardous, and competitive niches on the planet.
• The Tale of Rescue (Candlewick), a short novel about a cattle dog who heroically saves a family lost in an Ohio blizzard—“a lovely prose-poem adventure,” wrote Publishers’ Weekly in a starred review.
Michael has been active in professional development, writers’ residencies, curriculum development, and creative-writing workshops with readers, writers, and teachers for over 40 years, including 20 years as program director of the Thurber House, a literary center in Columbus, Ohio. His fifth and sixth collection of Thurber’s uncollected and unpublished works were published in conjunction with the humorist’s 125th birthday: Collected Fables (HarperCollins) and A Mile and a Half of Lines: The Art of James Thurber (Ohio State University Press).
Aimee Ross
Aimee Ross is a nationally award-winning educator and aspiring writer who’s been teaching high school English at her alma mater in Loudonville, Ohio, for the past twenty-six years. Aimee just published her first book, Permanent Marker: A Memoir (KiCam Projects, March 2018), but she has also had her writing published on TheManifestStation.net, NextAvenue.org, http://www.lifein10minutes.com, and http://www.SixHens.Com, as well as in Beauty around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2017); Scars: An Anthology (Et Alia Press, 2015); Today I Made a Difference: A Collection of Inspirational Stories from America’s Top Educators (Adams Media, 2009); and Teaching Tolerance magazine. Her passion for learning and teaching about the Holocaust has led to fellowships and study tours, published study guides and lessons (online and print), and numerous presentations, both nationally and internationally. She completed her MFA in Creative Non-Fiction Writing at Ashland University in 2014. Learn more about Aimee at https://theaimeeross.com/.
Jerry Roth
Jerry Roth is an award-winning author of Bottom Feeders, a bestseller from Sunbury Press. Following up this success, he released a psychological thriller, On the Tip of Her Tongue, one year later. The author currently lives in a converted 1908 Catholic church in Ohio. His writing career began with his award-winning screenplay, Gray Matter. Switching gears, Jerry created the critically successful Disc Golf website, Inkslingers DG, and wrote for the Disc Golf Pro Tour in 2017. His influences on writing can be traced backed to authors such as Anne Rice and Stephen King. Jerry’s upcoming literary projects include a horror novel, Ghost from a Yard Sale, a dark Fantasy, Into the Aether, and a Short Story novel, Throwing Shadows: A Dark Collection— available now on Amazon or from Brigids Gate Press. Learn more at: https://jerry-roth-author.squarespace.com/
Ty Roth
I was born, raised, and have lived my entire life in and around Sandusky, Ohio, (yes, the Sandusky, Ohio, of Tommy Boy fame) along the coast of Lake Erie. Other than my college years, my actual home has always been within a mile or two of Erie’s shores. It’s almost impossible for me to imagine living anywhere else.
For both the good and the bad, twenty-six years in Catholic schools (as a student then as a teacher) and countless Sunday masses have gone a long way to form my person and now to inform my writing. As with my family and the Lake, I seem unable to wander from out of the shadow of the Church.
I am not what I “do.” I do many things. I refuse to allow my person to be defined by the occupation through which I earn a living and ensure medical care, but I love teaching. I can’t imagine a more exciting or inspiring place to spend my life than in a high school and with teenagers. There and among them, the past is still erasable, the present is bursting with first-time experiences, and a future full of wonders lies ahead. In fact, I don’t believe that anyone ever graduates from high school, not really. In our minds, we forever walk the halls of our alma mater, and our teenage ghost haunts us wherever we go.
So, I write novels—not because I have to (I don’t have voices clamoring inside my head—well, at least no more than anybody else) but because it enables me to teach lessons of life and literature to individuals in places far beyond the walls of my classroom. No matter how little or how much money I earn as a writer or how many or how few books I sell, when asked, “What do you do?” I will always say, “I am a teacher.”
Moriel Rothman-Zecher
Moriel Rothman-Zecher, an Israeli-American novelist and poet, is a 2018 National Book Foundation ‘5 Under 35’ Honoree, and is the recipient of a 2017 MacDowell Colony Fellowship in Literature. His writing has been published in the New York Times, the Paris Review’s “The Daily,”Haaretz, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with his wife, Kayla, and their daughter, Nahar. Read more at TheLefternWall.com and follow him on Twitter @Moriel_RZ.