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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Joanne Huist Smith
Joanne (Jo) Huist Smith was an award-winning journalist for the Dayton Daily News where she chronicled the lives of people and issues shaping her Ohio community. She began writing short stories and journaling at age nine.
Jo was awarded first place from the Ohio Associated Press for Best Community Service for her 2009 package of stories on heroin’s destructive path through rural and suburban neighborhoods. The judges said her series “delivers information straight to the bloodstream.”
Jo’s career has been guided by advice given to her by former Dayton Daily News Managing Editor Steve Sidlo: “Love truth and you’ll be alright.” Those words are echoed in everything she writes, including The 13th Gift.
She is a life-long resident of the Dayton area and a graduate of Wright State University. She has three adult children and two absolutely adorable red-headed grandchildren.
Larry R. Smith
Larry Smith is a native of the industrial Ohio River Valley having grown up in Mingo Junction, Ohio, the second of four children. His father was a brakeman on the railroad of Weirton Steel where the author worked two summers to help pay for college. A graduate of Mingo High School, Muskingum College, and Kent State University, Smith taught at Bowling Green State University’s Firelands College from 1970 to 2012.
Smith has received fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a Fulbright Lecturer in Italy. His photo history of Mingo Junction appeared in the Images of America Series. He was the first poet laureate of Huron, Ohio, and is a founder and director of The Firelands Writing Center and Bottom Dog Press. He and wife Ann live along the sandy shores of Lake Erie in Huron, Ohio, and are the parents of 3 adults and have 8 grandchildren.
M. Earl Smith
M. Earl Smith is the author of Little Karl. With work for children and adults, he seeks to stretch the boundaries of genre and style. A graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Smith resides in Philadelphia, PA.
jw Smith
After 30 years as a professor in the field of Communication Studies, Dr. Smith reminisces about some of his experiences and how his race and differently abled intersectionality have influenced documented encounters. As a black and totally blind individual, he muses about how this distinction has both colored and shed light on what might have been innocuous or unremarkable encounters otherwise. This narrative charts his journey from leaving for graduate school to his present position as a tenured professor at a Midwest institution of higher learning. The memoir is riveting because of its vulnerability, candid honesty, and fresh transparency, as well as its conversational tone and quality. It is simultaneously an easy read but one that can also cause reflection and soul-searching without much warning. While the challenges of race and differently-abled issues are documented (and sometimes painfully so), Dr. Smith ultimately concludes that for the most part, these unique foci resulted in more positive outcomes than negative ones. It seems that only in America, is this story possible and the ultimate success of this memoir is clearly due to a strong faith in God, consistent and contagious family support, and hard work and perseverance.
Rose Smith
Rose M. Smith’s work has appeared in The Examined Life, pluck!, Naugatuck River Review, Snapdragon, Minola Review, Dying Dahlia Review, Main Street Rag, The Pedestal Magazine, Pavement Saw, Passager, Boston Literary Magazine and other journals. She is author of four chapbooks Shooting the Strays (Pavement Saw, 2003), A Woman You Know (Pudding House, 2010), a Poets’ Greatest Hits chapbook (Kattywompus Press), and most recently Holes in My Teeth (Kattywompus Press, 2016). Her work appears in the anthologies Mourning Sickness (Omni Arts LLC, 2008) and 50/50: Poems and Translations by Womxn Over 50 (Quills Edge Press, 2018) and other anthologies. Her collection, Unearthing Ida, won the 2018 Lyrebird Prize from Glass Lyre Press. She is a Senior Editor with Pudding Magazine and has served several years as a state competition judge and often as coach to student champion for Ohio Arts Council’s Poetry Out Loud program. Rose is an IT requirements analyst by day and completed a fellowship with Cave Canem Foundation in 2015.
Jamie Lyn Smith
Jamie Lyn Smith is a writer, editor, and teacher. She earned her BA in English and Theatre from Kenyon College, her Masters in Education from Fordham University, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Ohio State. Jamie Lyn is the Fiction Editor at BreakBread Magazine and a Consulting Editor for the Kenyon Review. Her work has appeared in The Pinch, The Mississippi Review, The Kenyon Review, American Literary Review, Yemassee, Bayou, and other fine literary magazines. She is currently working on Hometown, a novel about millennial crises and the rise of white nationalism in the rural Midwest, for which she received a 2020 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her short story collection, Township, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in January 2022.
Lucy A. Snyder
Lucy A. Snyder is the author of 15 books and over 100 published short stories. Her most recent titles are the apocalyptic horror novel Sister, Maiden, Monster and the collection Halloween Season. She lives near Columbus, Ohio with a jungle of houseplants, a clowder of cats, and an insomnia of housemates. You can learn more about her at http://www.lucysnyder.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.
Betsy Snyder
Author and illustrator Betsy Snyder has twenty years of experience creating for the children’s market. Her smile-inspiring art can be found on everything from social expressions products, board games, plush, decor, fabric, wallpaper, and of course—children’s books! Since making her publishing debut in 2007, Betsy has teamed with a diverse mix of publishers, earning recognition from groups including the Society of Illustrators, The New York Times, Scholastic Parent & Child Magazine, Indie Next List, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center and Please Touch Museum. Her newest titles, I Can Dream and I Can Explore (May 2018), join the earlier I Can Dance and I Can Play in an innovative board book series with Chronicle Books.
Betsy lives in Independence, Ohio, where she enjoys cozying up to doodle with her art-loving family of four and venturing out to schools and libraries to encourage kids (and even grown-ups) to share their stories and chase their dreams. Learn more about Betsy and her books at http://www.betsysnyder.com.
Linda Sohner
Linda Sohner is a retired speech therapist currently living in Greene County, Ohio. She shares her fascination with ancient worlds through engaging stories for children.
Jennifer Sommer
I am a writer of Children’s and Young Adult books. I received my MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN, and am an active member of SCBWI. I am currently represented by Stephen Fraser of Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency. Learn more at: https://jennifersommer.weebly.com/