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
Nicole Robinson
Nicole Robinson’s poems have appeared in Columbia Journal, The Fourth River, Great River Review, The Louisville Review, Spillway, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Individual Excellence Award for poetry from the Ohio Arts Council and the Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Currently serving as the narrative medicine coordinator at Akron Children’s Hospital, she resides in Ohio. Learn more: https://www.nicolerobinsonpoetry.com/
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).
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.
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).
Joel Rudiger
Joel Rudinger was born 1938 in Cleveland, OH and raised in Toledo, OH from 1945-1960. He left Ohio to study in Alaska and Iowa and returned to Ohio in 1966.
A graduate of the University of Alaska, the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop, and Bowling Green State University, Joel Rudinger taught at the Bowling Green State University–Firelands College in Huron, Ohio from 1967 to 2012. In addition to his fourth book of poetry, Symphonia Judaica: Jewish Symphony and Other Poems, he published First Edition: 40 Poems, Lovers and Celebrations, I Am the Hero of My Story, and the Inuit folk-based legend Sedna: Goddess of the Sea. He started the Cambric Press in 1971 and was editor-publisher of the Firelands Review and of the Cambric Poetry Projects. Income from sales and donations to the Firelands Review were transferred in 2013 to fund and endow the Rudinger Foundation Creative Arts Scholarship program.
Joel Rudinger has published numerous poems and stories in magazines such as the New York Quarterly, Colorado Review, Cornfield Review, The Heartlands Today, The Plough: North Coast Review, and New Waves. He has also illustrated several books published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. He is currently a BGSU Professor emeritus and Poet Laureate of Huron, OH, and is working on a memoir of his early Alaskan years.
Chuck Salmons
A native of Columbus, Ohio, Chuck Salmons is a poet and has served as part of leadership for the Ohio Poetry Association for more than a decade. His poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Pudding Magazine; Evening Street Review; The Ekphrastic Review; Common Threads; The Fib Review; Shot Glass Journal; Everything Stops and Listens; Poets to Come: A Poetry Anthology, in honor of Walt Whitman’s bicentennial; and I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices. His chapbook, Stargazer Suite, was released in December 2016 and is available from 11th Hour Press. His second chapbook, Patch Job, was published by NightBallet Press in 2017.
He won the 2011 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest, sponsored by The Poetry Forum of Columbus, has garnered awards from Ohio Poetry Day, and is a recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for his poetry. Chuck regularly gives readings throughout Ohio, both solo and as part of the poetry trio Concrete Wink, including the Columbus Arts Festival, the Winter Solstice Poetry Reading in Yellow Springs, and the Sun & Moon Poetry Festival.
Chuck leads workshops for various groups and audiences. And his poetry has been exhibited artistically in several places, including three features for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources “Art in the Lobby” program and in the 2021 After Hours exhibition at the Riffe Gallery in Columbus.
Chuck has worked in a variety of fields, including construction, education, and retail. He loves science, which often influences his poems, and works as Communications Manager at the Ohio Geological Survey. Learn more at his website: chucksalmons.com.
Yolonda Tonette Sanders
Ohio native Yolonda Tonette Sanders is an Essence magazine bestselling author with six novels to her credit, including Shadow of Death. She is also the founder and CEO of Yo Productions, LLC, a theatrical entertainment and literary services company that expanded its repertoire in 2015 to include publishing. A graduate of Capital University and later The Ohio State University, Yolonda once worked for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office until she quit in 2004 to focus more on writing. It’s a move that she has never regretted. As a writer, Yolonda enjoys the challenge of developing and completing projects that interest and inspire readers. As a speaker, she has been invited to address audiences across the country regarding various topics and appreciates the opportunities she has to connect with people from all walks of life. As a business owner, Yolonda seeks to help other writers develop and perfect their works. In addition to writing, Yolonda likes watching movies, exercising, and spending time with her family. Her favorite people on earth are her husband, David, and her two teenage children, Tre and Tia.
Rikki Santer
Rikki Santer’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications both nationally and abroad including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, The Journal of American Poetry, Hotel Amerika, Crab Orchard Review, Grimm, Slipstream and The Main Street Rag. Her work has received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eighth collection, Drop Jaw, inspired by the art of ventriloquism, was published by NightBallet Press in the spring of 2020.
Gregg Sapp
Gregg Sapp is a Pinnacle Award winning the author of the Holidazed series of cultural satires, each of which is centered around a different holiday. To date, there are seven books in the series, beginning with The Christmas Donut Revolution to the most recent, Mother Fracking Earth Day. Previous books include his dollar store epic, Dollarapalooza (Switchgrass Books, 2011), and Fresh News Straight from Heaven which is based on the folklore of Johnny Appleseed (Evolved 2018). He also writes essays, humor, poetry and short fiction that has appeared in literary journals far and wide. A native Ohioan, Gregg now writes full time and lives in Tumwater, WA. For more, see sappgregg.net
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke, after spending most of her life in Ohio, now lives in Florida. Her work has recently appeared in New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Massachusetts Review, and Shenandoah. She is the winner of a Sheila-Na-Gig Editor’s Choice Award for Fiction. Her zine about her experiences undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, Fine, Considering, is available from Rinky Dink Press (2019). Her full-length poetry collection, The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had, about Appalachian Ohio, is available now from Kelsay Books. She can be found on YouTube hosting the Meter Cute Interviews podcast focusing on interviews with contemporary writers on Meter&Mayhem.