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): 2017
Douglas Brinkley
Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He works in many capacities in the world of public history, including on boards, museums, colleges and historical societies. The Chicago Tribune dubbed him “America’s New Past Master”. The New-York Historical Society has chosen Brinkley as their official U.S. Presidential Historian. His recent book Cronkite won the Sperber Prize while The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He has received a Grammy Award for Presidential Suite and seven honorary doctorates in American Studies. His two-volume annotated The Nixon Tapes recently won the Arthur S. Link – Warren F. Kuehl Prize. He is a member of the Century Association, Council of Foreign Relations and the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and three children.
e.E. Charlton-Trujillo
Described as “a force of nature” by Kirkus Reviews, author, filmmaker and youth literacy activist e.E. Charlton-Trujillo has written several books for teens and children, most notably the ALA Winning and Choose to Read Ohio series Fat Angie. Their celebrated co-authored picture books with NYT Bestseller Pat Zietlow Miller include: Lupe Lopez: Rock Star Rules, Lupe Lopez: Reading Rock Star, and A Girl Can Build Anything. Trujillo’s short fiction appeared in the Read Across America selection Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican In America and the lauded anthology The Collectors edited by A.S. King. They are the co-founder of the literacy nonprofit Never Counted Out and a Madriana with Las Musas.
Julie Chase
Julie Chase is a mystery-loving pet enthusiast who hopes to make readers smile. She lives in rural Ohio with her husband and three small children. Julie is a member of the International Thriller Writers (ITW) and Sisters in Crime (SinC). She is represented by Jill Marsal of Marsal Lyons Literary Agency. Julie also writes as Julie Anne Lindsey.
Jennifer Chiaverini
Jennifer Chiaverini is the New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, Fates and Traitors, and other acclaimed works of historical fiction, as well as the beloved Elm Creek Quilts series. She lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin.
Liz Coley
Liz Coley has been writing short and long fiction for teens and adults for more than ten years. Her short fiction has appeared in Cosmos Magazine and several speculative fiction anthologies: The Last Man, More Scary Kisses, and Strange Worlds. In 2011, she self-published the YA novel Out of Xibalba, a story that begins when the world ends. The same week Out of Xibalba launched, Liz sold YA dark contemporary psychological thriller Pretty Girl-13 to HarperCollins for international publication. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband, her teenaged daughter, a snoring dog, and a limping old cat. The two older boys have flown the nest for college. Her passions beyond reading and writing include singing, photography, and baking. She plays competitive tennis to keep herself fit and humble. Taped on her computer are her “lucky charms”—the fifteen Chinese cookie fortunes collected over the years which spoke to her writing aspirations and encouraged her along the journey. She’s LizColeyBooks on social media and at http://www.LizColey.com.
Shelley Costa
SHELLEY COSTA is a 2004 Edgar Award nominee for Best Short Story, and 2014 Agatha Award nominee for Best First Novel (You Cannoli Die Once, Simon and Schuster). She is the author of Basil Instinct (Simon and Schuster, 2014), Practical Sins for Cold Climates (Henery Press, 2016) and A Killer’s Guide to Good Works (Henery Press, 2016). Shelley’s short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Blood on Their Hands, and The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories. She teaches fiction writing at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Visit her at http://www.shelleycosta.com.
Bill Cotter
Bill was cooked slowly and evenly in the warm embrace of midwest suburbia. After studying art in Baltimore, he then moved to New York City where he found work as a pre-K art and music teacher. In between fingerpainting and singing songs he wrote and illustrated is debut book “Don’t Push the Button!” which has gone on to be a USA Today bestseller. Bill has since moved back to his hometown of Cleveland and spends his days drawing, playing music, and daydreaming.
Teri Ellen Cross Davis
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint, published by Gival Press. She is a Cave Canem fellow and has attended the Soul Mountain Writer’s Retreat, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is on the Advisory Committee for the biennial Split This Rock Festival and is a semi-finalist judge for the NEA’s Poetry Out Loud. She is part of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. Her work can be read in many anthologies including Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC; The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks and Not Without Our Laughter: poems of joy, humor, and sexuality and the following journals Poet Lore, The North American Review, Gargoyle, Natural Bridge, Torch, Fledgling Rag, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Delaware Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Tin House and Auburn Avenue. She coordinates the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series at the Folger Shakespeare Library and lives in Silver Spring, MD, with her husband poet Hayes Davis and their two children. Their website is http://www.poetsandparents.com.
Mark Dawidziak
Mark Dawidziak is the author or editor of 25 books, including three studies of landmark television series: “The Columbo Phile: A Casebook,” “The Night Stalker Companion” and “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the The Twilight Zone,” his lighthearted 2017 tribute to Rod Serling’s classic anthology series. He also is an internationally recognized Mark Twain scholar, and five of his books are about the iconic American writer. He has been portraying Twain on stage for more than 45 years. No less an authority than Ken Burns has said, “Nobody gets Mark Twain the way Mark Dawidziak does.” His most recent book is the Edgar, Agatha and Anthony-nominated biography “A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe.” Born in New York, Dawidziak spent 43 years as a television, film and theater critic at such newspapers as the Akron Beacon Journal and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In 2015, he was inducted into the Press Club of Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame. He also is the author of the 1994 horror novel “Grave Secrets,” as well as such non-fiction books as “The Barter Theatre Story: Love Made Visible,” “The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Dracula” and “The Shawshank Redemption Revealed: How One Story Keeps Hope Alive,” a 2019 deep-dive look at the beloved film based on a novella by Stephen King. He also is the editor of three volumes of works by celebrated “Twilight Zone” contributor Richard Matheson, who mentioned Dawidziak in the dedications to two of his books.
His work on the spooky side of the street also includes short stories, novellas, and comic book scripts. Dawidziak and Paul J. Bauer are the authors of the first full-length biography of “hobo author” Jim Tully, a forgotten writer hailed as “America’s Gorky” and as a literary superstar in the 1920s and ’30s. Titled “Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler,” it was published in hardcover by Kent State University Press in 2011 with a foreword by Ken Burns (recently issued in paperback by Commonwealth Book Company). A former vagabond and boxer, Tully wrote about the American underclass and was credited with founding the hard-boiled school of writing. Bauer and Dawidziak also edited and wrote the introductions for Kent State University Press reprints of four of Tully’s books: “Beggars of Life,” “Circus Parade,” “Shanty Irish” and “The Bruiser.” Two more reprints, “Shadows of Men” and “Blood on the Moon,” were published by Commonwealth Book Company in 2023. In 2002, Dawidziak and his wife, actress Sara Showman, founded the Largely Literary Theater Company, dedicated to promoting literature, literacy and live theater. Their repertoire includes works by Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe. https://www.markdawidziak.com/
Darren Demaree
Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-three poetry collections, most recently So Much More (Harbor Editions, November 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the editor-in-chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the managing editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system. https://darrencdemaree.com/