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.
Julie L. Moore
Julie L. Moore is the author of Particular Scandals, which appears in The Poiema Poetry series by Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf & Stock Publishers. Her other books include Slipping Out of Bloom and Election Day. A Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Moore has won the Editor’s Choice Award from Writecorner Press, the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize from Ruminate, and the Rosine Offen Memorial Award from the Free Lunch Arts Alliance. She’s also been a finalist in many competitions sponsored by acclaimed journals like Dogwood, River Styx, Many Mountains Moving, and Nimrod International Journal. Her poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, The Missouri Review Online, Nimrod International Journal, Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily.
E.S. Moore
E.S. Moore was born and raised in Ohio where he still lives with his wife and son. He attended Ohio University, majoring in Electronic Media and later Telecommunications. Writing has always been a big part of his life, with paranormal and horror being especially important to him. Moore is busy penning more Kat Redding adventures.
Oge Mora
Oge Mora is a collage artist and storyteller. Her picture book, Thank You, Omu!, was a Caldecott Honor, Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award winner, and Ezra Jack Keats Book Award recipient. Her second book, Saturday won the 2020 Boston Globe—Horn Book Picture Book Award. Oge’s artwork has been applauded by The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe.…
Read MoreOge Mora is a collage artist and storyteller. Her picture book, Thank You, Omu!, was a Caldecott Honor, Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award winner, and Ezra Jack Keats Book Award recipient. Her second book, Saturday won the 2020 Boston Globe—Horn Book Picture Book Award. Oge’s artwork has been applauded by The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe. She is also a 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 Lister in Arts & Style.
Oge grew up in Columbus, Ohio but resides in Providence, RI. She is a fan of all things colorful, patterned, or collaged, and enjoys creating warm stories that celebrate people coming together. Visit her website at: http://www.ogemora.com/.
David Lee Morgan , Jr.
David Lee Morgan, Jr. has been a sports reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal since 1995. He has won several awards for his coverage of high school sports, including the James A. Sutherland Award, given to the top “rookie” reporter in Northeast Ohio and was named the Ohio Prep Sportswriters Association Writer of the Year three times (2004, 2007, 2009). He is a former high school and collegiate athlete. He played baseball and basketball at Warren G. Harding High School in Warren, Ohio and baseball at Youngstown State University.
Ruth Hanford Morhard
Ruth Hanford Morhard was memorizing the batting and earned run averages of Major League baseball players and reading baseball books when most young girls were playing with dolls. A native of Connecticut, she grew up a rabid fan of the Boston Red Sox, changing her allegiance to the Cleveland Indians when she moved to Ohio, ever hopeful of a long-awaited World Series win!
Combining her love of baseball with another passion, writing, it seems natural that she would one day write a book about baseball. MRS. MORHARD AND THE BOYS is that book—about a single mom who created the first boys’ baseball leagues in the depths of the Great Depression to help her son overcome the trauma of his early childhood. The book will be published on February 26, 2019 by Citadel Press, just in time for spring training and the start of the baseball season!
Career-wise, she’s been a senior executive with major philanthropic and arts institutions and currently serves as a consultant to national, regional and local institutions. Her work in early childhood education led to her practical nonfiction book, “Wired to Move: Facts and Strategies for Nurturing Boys in Early Childhood Settings,” published in 2013. She has a Certificate in Creative Nonfiction from Stanford University and a BA degree from Skidmore College.
She lives in Chardon, Ohio with her husband Al, son of the Mrs. Morhard of the book title.
Doug Motz
Doug Motz is the Past President of the Columbus Historical Society and continues to give tours of the core city for CHS. He is the co-author Kahiki Supper Club: A Polynesian Paradise in Columbus. He writes a “History Lesson” column for the website columbusunderground.com and gives a monthly local history quiz on the local ABC affiliate WSYX’ morning television program, Good Day Columbus. When not researching Columbus History, he spends his time singing with the Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus which he serves as Vice-President.
David Mould
David Mould, professor emeritus of media arts and studies at Ohio University, has traveled widely in Asia and southern Africa as a trainer, consultant, and researcher, and has written articles and essays for newspapers, magazines and online media. Born in the UK, he worked as a newspaper and TV journalist before moving to the US in 1978. Postcards from the Borderlands is his third book on travel, history and culture. Kirkus Reviews describes him as “A genial travel guide … an academic who does not write like an academic.”
Luma Mufleh
LUMA MUFLEH is the founder of Fugees Family, with schools now in Georgia and Ohio and an expanding footprint bringing educational equity to refugee resettlement communities across America. Her TED Talk on educational justice for refugee families was viewed more than 1.7 million times. Learn more at: https://fugeesfamily.org/about/luma-mufleh/
Chiquita Mullins Lee
Chiquita Mullins Lee is an Arts Learning coordinator for the Ohio Arts Council (OAC) where she coordinates the Arts Partnership and Big Yellow School Bus grant programs and Ohio’s Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest. Formerly of Atlanta, she has over twenty years of experience in broadcast production and programming and worked as a public television producer/director in Nashville, Tennessee.…
Read MoreChiquita Mullins Lee is an Arts Learning coordinator for the Ohio Arts Council (OAC) where she coordinates the Arts Partnership and Big Yellow School Bus grant programs and Ohio’s Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest. Formerly of Atlanta, she has over twenty years of experience in broadcast production and programming and worked as a public television producer/director in Nashville, Tennessee. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, a Master of Arts degree from Ohio University, and a second master’s degree from The Ohio State University. Chiquita has served as the chair and Midwest regional coordinator for the Arts Education Working Group, in association with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and has served on the Arts Education and partnership review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts. As a teaching artist for OAC’s Artist-in-Residence program, she engaged students throughout Ohio in creative writing activities. She won individual artist/excellence awards in fiction and playwriting from the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) and in fiction and nonfiction from OAC. She was writer-in-residence at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia. Her nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have appeared in national literary journals and her work is featured on the PBS American Portrait project, For My People: The Re-Mix. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is featured on the Long Street Cultural Wall in Columbus, Ohio. She hosted the Emmy award-winning program, Traditions – Ohio Heritage Fellows produced by Think-TV in Dayton. She writes and performs with Columbus-based Wild Women Writing, and recently performed in the plays, Twelve Hours and The Shakespeare Club by Dave Carley, and Lost Lake by David Auburn. She portrayed Venus in William Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and appeared in PAST PRODUCTIONS’ presentation of Sisters by Marsha Jackson. Chiquita co-wrote 12, a three-woman show about girls on the threshold of womanhood, and Myrlie, Coretta and Betty: the Mothers of the Civil Rights Movement, in which she plays Coretta Scott King. Chiquita’s critically acclaimed play, Pierce to the Soul, premiered at CATCO, toured central Ohio with A Portable Theatre Company, and was featured in the 2019 History in ACTion Playwright’s Festival, which also presented her monologue, Ms. Morrison Speaks to Pilate from Song of Solomon. A member of New Covenant Believers Church, Chiquita leads Word Warriors creative writing ministry. Her picture book, YOU GOTTA MEET MR. PIERCE, co-authored with Carmella Van Vleet and illustrated by Jennifer Mack-Watkins is published by Kokila Books, an imprint of Penguin/Random House.
Learn more at: https://www.chiquitamullinslee.com/
Patricia Colleen Murphy
Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, published as a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection. Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.