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): Fiction
Ellen Fritz
Ellen Fritz is a retired teacher and high school counselor. Over the years of teaching reading and English to students in grades seven through twelve before becoming a counselor, she had the great opportunity to discuss numerous favorite books with students and also took their recommendations for her own reading.
She finally found herself with the time to give life to the stories that have always been patiently waiting in her head for an audience. Ellen wrote Mira to appeal to those middle grade/teen readers that she found so inspiring through her career as an educator.
Kimberly Gabriel
Kimberly Gabriel started writing in fourth grade when she wrote, bound, and gave away books of terrible poetry to family and teachers as holiday gifts. Today she is an English teacher, who still squanders all free minutes to write and uses it as the best scapegoat for her laundry avoidance issues. When she is not teaching or writing, Kimberly is enjoying life with her husband, her three beautiful children, and a seriously beautiful boxer in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Every Stolen Breath is her debut novel and a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.
Laura Gaddis
Laura (she/her) is an author/educator from Oxford, Ohio. Her memoir Mosaic (Unsolicited Press) delves into loss, motherhood, and parenting a child with disabilities. She has been published in Thin Air Magazine, 805 Lit + Art, Stonecoast Review, Brevity Blog, and elsewhere. Laura’s essay Well Meaning People was Pushcart Nominated. She has been awarded a teaching fellowship for the Desert Nights Rising Stars Writers’ Conference with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. More about Laura can be found at http://www.lauragaddis.com
Dee Garretson
Dee writes middle grade, young adult and adult fiction under her own name and also writes for the Boxcar Children series under the original author’s name. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her family in a book-cluttered house surrounded by a semi-wild garden. Her two cats Piper and Poppy are her writing companions and the stars of Skype visits with book clubs. When Dee is not writing or reading, she is most likely watching old movies, cooking treats to go along with book reading or trying to learn to make jewelry.
Paul L. Gaus
P.L. Gaus was born in Athens, Ohio and has lived in Ohio for most of his life. In 1999 he published Blood of the Prodigal: An Ohio Amish Mystery (Ohio Univ. Press, 1999), the first of a series of mysteries set among the Amish in Holmes County, Ohio. The Names of Our Tears, Gaus’ first book for Plume, was published in 2013. Gaus’ extensive knowledge of the culture and lifestyle of the Ohio Amish comes from over thirty-five years of travel throughout Holmes County and the surrounding area, which is home to the world’s largest Amish and Mennonite population. He lectures widely about Amish culture at libraries, bookstores, and literary societies. His novels have been reviewed in prominent journals and newspapers including Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, Ohioana Quarterly, and the New York Times Book Review. Visit Paul at http://www.plgaus.com/.
Donna B. Gawell
Donna Gawell is a genealogist, historian, and author of several published books and journal articles. She is a presenter on genealogy, travel, and family history writing for community organizations and church groups. Donna holds volunteer leadership roles with Samaritan’s Purse as a Relay Center Coordinator for Operation Christmas Child and is a Church Coordinator for International Friendships, Inc., a Christian outreach to international students at Ohio State University.
Donna earned a master’s degree in Speech Pathology and worked in the field of education for over thirty years. She lives in Westerville, Ohio with her husband Mark when not traveling to research her ancestral homelands in Europe and New England. Her website “DonnaGawell.com” allows her to reach out to readers with similar passions and interests.
Becky Gehrisch
Becky Gehrisch grew up drawing dogs and farm scenes after visiting her grandparents’ homes in the country. It’s no wonder that she went on to create Escape To Play after earning an art degree from The Ohio State University. Becky moved to a rural town in Ohio where she is constantly inspired by the beautiful countryside and wildlife just outside her window. You can find her getting into her own kind of shenanigans with her husband and kids as they explore the USA in their RV.
Jennifer Geiger
Jennifer Geiger, the daughter of an oil company dispatcher, was born in Kansas, and because of her father’s job, transferred to Ohio during her elementary years. Growing up, Jennifer entertained her friends and family with stories she invented using characters they supplied. It wasn’t until after she married and had children of her own, that her desire to create stories resurfaced through those she created for her own. She is the mother of three grown daughters, who have given her seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. She has been married over 30 years to her husband, Jim. Her passion for writing nearly died out until her younger brother encouraged her to finish the stories she had started. Encouraged at his words, Jennifer sat down at her computer and completed her first book, Witness; a story with an interesting twist revolving around the apostle John as he witnessed life with Jesus. Jennifer followed Witness with an eight-session video and workbook series created so the reader could step into the shoes of the apostle John thereby experiencing life with Jesus through the eyes of the disciple He loved. Continuing the story, Jennifer produced her latest novel, Patmos. Her new adventure picks up where Witness left off—filling the gaps of John’s life during his banishment where he receives a special revelation from God.
Scott Geisel
Scott Geisel is the author of the Jackson Flint mystery series, the Appalachian noir suspense novel Miller Knew, and short stories. He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, one of the coolest small towns in America. The Jackson Flint novels are set in Yellow Springs. Scott grew up in Ohio and was an avid reader from an early age. He fondly remembers his elementary school classes making weekly trips to the school library where he would exchange books he’d read for new adventures in the books he would find. Some early favorites were The Three Investigator series and Encyclopedia Brown solve-a-mystery books. Later influences include watching The Rockford Files and Magnum, P.I., noting that Magnum narrating the series was a key element of that show. Scott left home to study physics at a small engineering college. Interests such as a chopper he built from parts and the isolated nature of the school were among distractions that kept him from completing a degree. Scott later completed a degree in math, then went to the blue-color world where he worked in food service, factories, and on loading docks. In his late twenties, he married Pam and returned to college to complete undergraduate and graduate degrees in the humanities. He has been teaching college writing courses since the mid-1990s. Scott kept a hand in writing and among other things has published a variety of short stories, been included in Best New Writing, been a finalist for the Hoffer Award, had an audio story aired on NPR station WYSO, and had his work published alongside well-known historical writers in the Kent State University Press anthology Christmas Stories from Ohio. Scott and his wife often look for books set in places they travel to. One of their first destinations when away from home is bookstores, where they often ask where to find the local authors, especially if there are mysteries set in the locale. When he finally had some time for serious writing, Scott embarked on the Jackson Flint mystery novels set in his own hometown, completing Fair Game, Water to Bind, and Wheat Penny. Those have been well received and positively reviewed by sources such as Publishers Weekly. To that series he added the Appalachian noir suspense novel Miller Knew. Scott is currently writing an adventure novel set in and around Orcas Island.
Carole Gerber
Carole Gerber is a poet and children’s book author living in Powell, Ohio. She has written nearly two dozen picture books, early readers, and chapter books.
Gerber has worked as a high school and middle school English teacher, an adjunct professor of journalism at Ohio State, a marketing director, editor of a company magazine, a member of creative teams at an ad agency and a hospital, a contributing editor to a computer magazine, and – finally! – as a freelance writer of hundreds of elementary textbooks, magazine articles, speeches, annual reports, and patient education materials.
Besides being a “Jill” of many trades – or more precisely – one trade, writing, with many incarnations, Gerber is married to Mark, the mother of two grown daughters, Jess and Paige, and “Mimi” to Sara and Tyler, Paige’s children. In addition, she sponsors half a dozen children at a time through World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children of all faiths in more than 100 developing countries. Gerber keeps their photos posted to remind her of her blessings and responsibilities.
In her free time, she volunteers as a tour guide for children at a local nature preserve and farm. Gerber also enjoys gardening, though her enthusiasm dwindles as summer progresses, and reading, mostly for her own pleasure and edification. Gerber belongs to a neighborhood book discussion group, enjoys traveling to learn about other countries and cultures, and practices yoga which, like writing, is humbling and challenging. For more information, visit http://carolegerber.com/