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.
- You are searching within category(ies): Poetry
Tricia Orr
Tricia’s poems have been published in Zoomorphic, Rust + Moth, The Loft Anthology (Poetry Prize finalist 2013), Entelelchy International: A Journal of Contemporary Ideas, A Hundred Gourds and Contemporary Haibun.
After living in New Hampshire for 13 years, Tricia returned to her rust belt roots in Cleveland, Ohio in 2013 where she writes, tutors refugees from Somalia and Bhutan, and pulls her old dog around the block in a Radio Flyer.
Social Media:
Twitter @writeorrelse
Website Triciaorr.com
Paul Orshoski
Paul Orshoski, children’s author and poet, is a former school teacher, coach and principal from Sandusky, Ohio. He writes witty, humorous, rhyming children’s books and poems. Paul is the author of thirteen children’s books published by Treasure Bay, Inc. of Novato, California. Several of his books are part of Treasure Bay’s “We Read Phonics” series, including “Where is My Frog?”, “Robot Man”, and “Sports Dream”, which were selected as Mom’s Choice Awards Gold Honor winners in 2011. Paul has four books published in the “We Both Read” Treasure Bay series entitled, “My Sitter is a T-Rex!”, “The Mouse in My House”, “The Mouse in My House / Un raton en mi casa”, and “The Ant and The Pancake”. Paul is also the author of several poems that have appeared in poetry anthologies These include: “My Teacher’s in Detention”, “Dinner with Dracula”, “I’ve Been Burping in the Classroom”, “I Hope I Don’t Strike Out”, and “What I Did on my Summer Vacation”. Paul’s poems have also appeared in the following magazines: “Boys’ Quest”, “Fun For Kidz”, “Hopscotch For Girls”, “Scholastic Action”, and “The School Administrator”. Paul enjoys making kids giggle during school visits by enthusiastically performing his poems and books in small or large group settings wherever he is asked to present.
Emily Patterson
Emily Patterson is the author of So Much Tending Remains (Kelsay Books), a collection of poems chronicling the first year of motherhood. She received her B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University—where she was awarded the F.L. Hunt Prize for Most Promising Creative Writer, the Marie Drennan Prize for Poetry, and the Class of 1870 Memorial Prize for Creative Nonfiction—and her M.A. in Literature for Children and Young Adults from The Ohio State University. Emily is the 2022 contest judge for the Minerva Rising Press poetry chapbook competition, “Dare to Be . . .” In 2021, her poem “On the Playground, I Think About How a Mother Is Like a Moth” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Emily’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Rust and Moth, Mom Egg Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Sunlight Press, Literary Mama, The Mum Poem Press, Thimble Literary Magazine, and elsewhere.
Allison Pitinii Davis
Allison Pitinii Davis is the author of _Line Study of a Motel Clerk_
(Baobab Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award’s
Berru Award for Poetry. This collection explores immigration, labor,
gender, and diaspora in Ohio’s Rust Belt. She is also the author of
_Poppy Seeds_ (Kent State University Press, 2013), winner of the Wick
Poetry Chapbook Prize. She holds an MFA from Ohio State University and
fellowships from Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program, the Fine
Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Severinghaus Beck Fund for
Study at Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Her poetry has appeared in Best
American Poetry 2016, The New Republic, Crazyhorse, The Missouri Review,
Sycamore Review, Connotation Press, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere.
She is pursuing a PhD at The University of Tennessee, where she serves
as a poetry editor of Grist.
Elana Pitts
Elana is a writer who has been published in 6 anthologies under Lake Erie Ink (LEI) and read at the 2017 Cleveland Drafts. Her first book, Little Wolfpine, was self-published in 2021. In 2022, she read at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). She is currently working as a program assistant, going into schools to help students express themselves creatively as she continues her work on new installments while pursuing her creative writing degree. Learn more: https://elanapittsep.wixsite.com/website-3
Bonnie Proudfoot
Bonnie Proudfoot moved to Athens, OH, in 1996. She is the author of Goshen Road, a novel (Swallow Press, 2020), which was Long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway Award, selected for Great Group Reads in 2020, and awarded Book of the Year for 2022 by WCONA. She was delighted to participate in Ohioana in 2020. Bonnie has published poetry, fiction, and short prose in many journals. Her first book of poems, Household Gods, was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, in September, 2022. Learn more at: https://bonnieproudfootblog.wordpress.com/
Damaris Puñales-Alpízar
Dr. Damaris Puñales–Alpízar is Professor of Hispanic Studies, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Director of the International Studies program, and the Executive Sponsor of Alianza Latina/Latin Alliance at Case Western Reserve University. She studied Journalism at the University of Havana and has worked as a journalist in Cuba, Belize, and Mexico. In Belize, she founded Conexión, the first bilingual and trans-border newspaper, and in Mexico, she was a correspondent for regional and national mass media outlets. She directs two study abroad programs at CWRU in Spain.
Her scholarly publications include the books La Maldita Circunstancia, Ensayos Sobre Literatura Cubana (2020) and Escrito en Cirílico: El Ideal Soviético en la Cultura Cubana Posnoventa (2012). Her next book is coming out by the National Autonomous University of Mexico with the title Códigos Rojos: Geopolíticas de la Traducción Durante la Guerra Fría, Cuba y el Bloque del Este. She has edited the volumes Asedios al Caimán Letrado: Literatura y Poder en la Revolución Cubana (with Emilio J. Gallardo Saborido and Jesús Gómez de Tejada, 2018) and El Atlántico Como Frontera: Mediaciones Culturales Entre Cuba y España (2014). She has coordinated the special dossiers “Cuba: A Cultural Prospection,” for the academic journal Cuadernos del Sur–Letras, (National University of the South, Argentina, 2021), and “Cuba: The Soviet Flavor of a Tropical Island. A Visit 20 Years Later,” for La Habana Elegante: Revista Semestral de Literatura y Cultura Cubana, Caribeña, Latinoamericana, y de Estética No. 51 (Spring-Summer 2012). Her scholarly articles have appeared in leading journals in the United States, Cuba, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Slovenia, Argentina, Canada, Peru, France and Spain, such as Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Caribbean Studies, Revista Iberoamericana, La Habana Elegante, Kamchatka, Vallejo&Co, Revista de Letras, Artelogie, Cuadernos del Sur–Letras, Teatro, Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, etc.
In 2021, Dr. Puñales-Alpízar was one of the two faculty awardees at Case Western Reserve University for the Flora Stone Mather Woman of Achievement and Mather Spotlight Award. That same year, she won an Expanding Horizons Initiative Grant to organize the international conference “Translation Practices during the Cold War: A Multidisciplinary Approach.” In 2018, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Russia to complete research for her current scholarly project on the geopolitics of socialist translations. During the 2013-2015 period, Puñales-Alpízar was elected delegate from the Great Lakes region to the Modern Language Association. Regularly, she writes and translates for the Collective Arts Network Journal, CAN, in Cleveland, and publishes op-ed pieces in a Spanish newspaper. She was a Member of the Board of LatinUS Theater Company in Cleveland, and is the founder and president of the non-profit organization Trasatlántica. Poetry and Scholarship (https://trasatlantica.org/). She is also a member of the Editorial Board of the academic journal Caribe.
Phoebe Reeves
Phoebe Reeves earned her MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and now is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has three chapbooks of poetry, most recently The Flame of Her Will (Milk & Cake), and her first full length collection, Helen of Bikini (Lily Poetry Review) was published in March, 2023. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Best New Poets, Grist, Forklift OH, and The Chattahoochee Review, and she has been awarded fellowships by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Cincinnati, OH with her husband Don Peteroy, amidst her unruly urban garden. Learn more: phoebereeves.com
James Alan Riley
James Alan Riley is an American poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council. Riley received his Ph.D. from Ohio University. He is a Professor of English at the University of Pikeville in Pikeville, KY.
Sandra Rivers-Gill
A Native Ohioan, Sandra Rivers-Gill is a poet, teaching artist, and performer. Her poetry has garnered numerous awards, and has been featured in journals and anthologies. She is a member of the Ohio Poetry Association and has participated in events such as Lit Youngstown Festival, Poetry Out Loud, Spoken & Heard, and the Toledo Arts Commission. She is editor of Dopeless Hope Fiends, a limited-addition anthology of poems penned by women recovering from substance and alcohol abuse published by The Radio Room Press (2018). As We Cover Ourselves With Light is her debut chapbook published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions (2023).