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
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/
Margie Shaheed
Margie Shaheed is a community poet, writer and teaching artist. She is the author of three chapbooks, Mosaic, Onomonopoeia, and Playground. She is currently completing a non-fiction book, Tongue Shakers: Interviews and Narratives on Speaking Mother Tongue in a Multicultural Society.
Annette Dauphin Simon
Annette Dauphin Simon is the author and illustrator of several books for young readers, including Mocking Birdies and Robot Zombie Frankenstein! A former advertising creative director, she first found spine poetry—or spine poetry found her—as a bookseller in an independent bookshop. A proud parent of two lovely grown humans and one who lives yet in her heart, Annette’s at home in Southport, North Carolina. And any place with a book. Learn more at: https://annettesimon.net/
Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The Best American Poetry, and more. Maggie Smith’s next book, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, is forthcoming from Atria/Simon & Schuster on April 1, 2025. You can follow her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet and learn more at https://maggiesmithpoet.com/
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.
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.
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.
Kelly Sollinger
As a child, Kelly would spend hours cloud-watching in the fields or staring at the fish in the family pond. Back then, she drew and painted and wrote poetry, but, as many do, went on to something “safe” and “acceptable:” a career programming computers. As an adult, she began exploring the urges to paint and create, eventually leaving the safe zone to establish her art and writing practices. She continues to evolve as a creative on a daily basis and often expresses that transformation through poetry. Kelly has a BA in Computer Information Systems, an MA in Theology, and is currently pursuing training as a spiritual director. Her programming career began at NASA and spanned almost 30 years. She briefly worked in church ministry before setting out to establish Dancing Owl Studio. Nowadays she paints, writes, and creates to her heart’s content. DancingOwlStudio.com
Anna Soter
Anna Soter is Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University, and Adjunct Professor at CCAD, and at Self-Design Graduate Institute (Washington State). Her academic specializations are applied linguistics, contrastive rhetoric, literary theory applications to young adult literature, and the role of language as a field of energy. She is founder of The Hospital Poets (USA and Australia), a regular feature in The Ohio State University’s Humanism in Medicine program. She is also faculty submissions editor of Ether Arts, the OSU College of Medicine’s Literary and Visual Annual Arts Magazine. Anna continues to serve as co-convener (with Fred Andrle and Charlene Fix) of The Hospital Poets. In 2014, she received the OSU Wexner Medical Center William Osler M.D. Award for her work and commitment to Medicine and the Arts since its 2009 inauguration, and the OSU Wexner Medical Center Medicine and the Arts Certificate of Recognition for exemplary contributions in bringing the arts into the lives of medical staff, patients and families.
Anna has been a frequent featured reader in a variety of Columbus and state poetry venues for many years. She has primarily published scholarly books and articles and individual poems. Breathing Spaces is her first poetry collection.
https://ehe.osu.edu/news/listing/emeritus-academy-recognizes-lifelong-scholars
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XjfBZh0AAAAJ&hl=en
Emily Spencer
Emily Spencer is the author of East Walnut Hills, winner of the Zone 3 Press Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Spencer is an assistant professor at Miami University.