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.
Randall L. Schieber
Randall Lee Schieber is a photographer based in Columbus, Ohio. He specializes in editorial, architectural, location, and travel photography and has published six books and numerous calendars. His work has appeared in a variety of local and national publications.
Brandy Schillace
I grew up in an underground house, next to a graveyard, in abandoned coal lands… with a pet raccoon. Oddly, this tends not to surprise people as much as I think it will. My rural community skirted the poverty line, a place of failed industry and orange rivers, poor health, and poorer access to healthcare. As a result, I spent my childhood reading a lot about disease and going to a lot of funerals. I ended up with a Ph.D. and a career in science history, which is probably a likely thing to happen when you spend your early years in a cemetery.
I’ve worked in an English Department, a History Department, and for a Medical Anthropology journal. I spent five years as a research associate in a medical museum among amputation saws, surgery kits, and smallpox vaccines—and now, in addition to being an author, I’m Editor-in-Chief for BMJ’s Medical Humanities Journal. I tend to fall outside the borders and binaries on every side.
I always liked the line by Walt Whitman: I contain multitudes. Each of us are completely unique sets of data and DNA, blood and bones, bits and pieces of ancient stardust (and some microplastics). We don’t just have fingerprints. We are fingerprints — completely unique phenomenon in the universe, never before and never to be again. I am a truck, a train, a bulldog in a wind-tunnel; I’m also autistic. I live in the middle spaces where the contradictions are, containing bits of astral matter, aspects of both genders and possibly some dragons and vampires. I do history the way most people climb mountains–I get my hands dirty–I end up in catacombs, archives, basements. As you can imagine, this sort of thing doesn’t fit in a box very well. Then again, life is more interesting at the intersections.
***Addendum on that pet raccoon… She eventually figured out how to open the fridge. It was a whole thing.
Check out her website: https://brandyschillace.com/
Eugene Schmiel
Eugene D. Schmiel is a retired U.S. Department of State Foreign Service officer. He was an assistant professor of history at St. Francis University (PA) and has taught at Marymount, Shenandoah, and Penn State universities. He holds the Ph.D. degree from The Ohio State University and coauthored, with his wife Kathryn, a book on life in the Foreign Service.
Read MoreEugene D. Schmiel is a retired U.S. Department of State Foreign Service officer. He was an assistant professor of history at St. Francis University (PA) and has taught at Marymount, Shenandoah, and Penn State universities. He holds the Ph.D. degree from The Ohio State University and coauthored, with his wife Kathryn, a book on life in the Foreign Service.
Ken Schneck
Ken Schneck is an author, professor, radio host, and rabble rouser. His travelogue, “Seriously, What Am I Doing Here?: The Adventures of a Wondering and Wandering Gay Jew” was published in 2017, “LGBTQ Cleveland” was released in 2018, and “LGBTQ Columbus” hits the shelves in June of 2019. He is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post, Cleveland Magazine and FreshWater Cleveland, and currently serves as the Editor for Prizm Magazine, Ohio’s only LGBTQ publication. For 10 years, he was the producer/host of “This Show is So Gay,” the award-winning, long-running radio show/podcast. In his spare time, he is a Professor of Education at Baldwin Wallace University.
Russell Schneider
Russell Schneider is an award-winning sportswriter who wrote for The Cleveland Plain Dealer until his retirement in 1993. He was elected to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame and has been nominated for election to the Baseball Writers Wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
E.F Schraeder
Author of As Fast as She Can (Sirens Call Publications, 2022) and Liar: Memoir of a Haunting (Omnium Gatherum, 2021), which was an Imadjinn Award finalist (2022), E.F. Schraeder is also the author of a story collection and two poetry chapbooks. Recent work has appeared in Lost Contact, Moonflowers & Nightshade, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and other journals and anthologies. Schraeder’s nonfiction has appeared in Vastarien: A Literary Journal; Radical Teacher; the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom blog, and elsewhere. Awarded first place in Crystal Lake Publishing’s 2021 Poetry Contest, E.F. Schraeder’s work also placed as a semi-finalist in Headmistress Press’ Charlotte Mew Contest (2019). An Active Member in the Horror Writers Association, E. F. Schraeder believes in ghosts, magic, and dogs. Learn more at: https://efschraeder.com/
Michaela Schuett
Most days, Michaela Schuett can be found somewhere in Ohio counting sunny days, giggles and jelly beans — usually with a sketchbook in hand.
Other days, she is in front of her computer designing and drawing amazing things for amazing people.
With a degree in journalism from Iowa State University, Michaela worked for many years as a writer, designer, copy editor, and illustrator for various newspapers and magazines. Most recently, she worked as the interim Art Director for Dispatch Magazines (2013) and was responsible for the monthly design of Columbus Monthly and its various special publications.
After nearly 13 years working full-time (2001-2013), she is now a freelance designer and illustrator.
Whether she’s working in corporate communications, editorial design, picture books, or small business—everything she does comes from the heart—with a passion for making complex information easy to understand.
Kathy Schulz
Kathy Schulz is a retired college librarian. A native Ohioan, she has deep roots in the state and degrees from three of its universities. She lived at two major Underground Railroad junctions and wants Americans to know that the Underground Railroad was mostly in Ohio and mostly above ground—not in tunnels! Kathy and her husband currently live in Santa Fe NM, where she stays busy with friends, hobbies, and grandchildren. Learn more about Kathy at her website: https://undergroundrailroadohio.com/
Kathryn Schulz
Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. She won a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for “The Really Big One,” an article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Lost & Found grew out of “Losing Streak,” which was originally published in The New Yorker and later anthologized in The Best American Essays. Her other essays and reporting have appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Food Writing. A native of Ohio, she lives with her family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Learn more at: https://www.kathrynschulz.com/
Salvatore Scibona
Salvatore Scibona’s most recent novel, The Volunteer, was called “a masterpiece” by the New York Times. His first novel, The End, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award. His work has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a Whiting Award; and The New Yorker named him one of its “20 under 40” fiction writers. He directs the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.