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): Nonfiction
Beth Macy
Beth Macy is a Virginia-based journalist, the author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America, and an executive producer and cowriter on Hulu’s Peabody Award-winning “Dopesick” series.
Daniel Mainzer
I am 78 years of age and have been a photographer since I was 12. In the meantime, I collected a Political Science degree from Muskingum University in 1968 and worked at various jobs till 1976 when Firestone employed me as a photographer. After four years and some months, I stepped off the deck of that sinking ship into a photographers job at Stouffer's foods.…
Read MoreI am 78 years of age and have been a photographer since I was 12. In the meantime, I collected a Political Science degree from Muskingum University in 1968 and worked at various jobs till 1976 when Firestone employed me as a photographer. After four years and some months, I stepped off the deck of that sinking ship into a photographers job at Stouffer’s foods. That lasted almost three years, and next I became a photographer at General Tire, which transformed itself into GenCorp, a new corporate structure. This turned out to be important because they urged me to start my own studio after 4+ years by letting me and 300 others go after a takeover bid. That was 1987, and I hit the ground running, freelancing for GenCorp and adding many clients to date.
An unexpected benefit from the 10 years in the rubber industry was a large body of work documenting the life of the workers and the destruction of the factories. Being a self-taught and photographer, I felt compelled to do this and felt I was operating in the same vein as Lewis Hine, Paul Strand and others who documented the world around them. At least there is a record of the factory work and the people who did it. Some of this photography has been published (1998) in a book ‘Wheels of Fortune’, a history of the rubber industry in Akron published by the Akron university Press. It is my hope that this body of work will be recognized and find a permanent home so people will remember their legacy.
Most of my work is commercial: studio product shots, location events, industrial, advertising and auto racing photography. The racing photography started when General Tire began a motorsports program in 1984, and is now a third of our current business. A branch of the business is panoramic stadium shots for professional and collegiate football and baseball. This started when my wife took a print of the Indians baseball stadium, Jacobs Field, to work and came home with 50+ print orders. I was the official photographer for the All American Soap Box Derby from 1980-2012.
Throughout my career I have always photographed landscapes, flowers, and the world in general. Being a self- taught photographer has allowed me to enjoy it as an avocation, in addition to my vocation; something I will always do. From 1969 to 1976, I assigned myself to make a finished b/w print a day and with few exceptions stuck to this routine until accepting my position at Firestone.
Landscapes have always been a relaxation to me even though they demand scouting, great light, technique, and patience. My commercial clients purchased the few landscapes that we displayed in the studio, and thus the move into gallery sales, shows and some contests.
I would like to have viewers feel as if they were standing next to me as i first see and photograph a scene. It is like we experience the impact of what we are seeing together. This is not about me in any way, but what i want to share with the viewer in terms of emotion, the beauty of the world we live in and whatever we feel viewing what i have done.
Amit Majmudar
AMIT MAJMUDAR is a poet, novelist, essayist, translator, and the former first Poet Laureate of Ohio. He works as a diagnostic and nuclear radiologist and lives in Westerville, Ohio, with his wife and three children. He is the author of seventeen books so far in a variety of categories, with different bodies of work published in the United States and in India.
POETRY: His poetry collections include 0’, 0’ (Northwestern, 2009), shortlisted for the Norma Faber First Book Award; and Heaven and Earth (2011, Storyline Press), which won the Donald Justice Prize. These volumes were followed by Dothead (Knopf, 2016) and What He Did in Solitary (Knopf, 2020). His poems have won the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in the Norton Introduction to Literature, The New Yorker, and numerous Best American Poetry anthologies as well as journals and magazines across the United States, UK, India, and Australia. Majmudar also edited, at Knopf’s invitation, a political poetry anthology entitled Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now. Majmudar’s forthcoming volume, a hybrid of prose, drama, and poetry, is Three Metamorphoses (Orison Books, 2024).
NONFICTION: Majmudar’s essays have appeared in Marginalia at the Los Angeles Review of Books, where he is a contributing editor, as well as The Best American Essays 2018, The New York Times, and the Times of India, among several other publications. His collection of essays, focusing on Indian religious philosophy, history, and mythology, is Black Avatar and Other Essays (Acre Books, 2023). Twin A: A Memoir (Slant Books, 2023) is a memoir, in prose and verse, about his son’s struggle with congenital heart disease.
FICTION: Majmudar’s work as a novelist includes two works of historical fiction centered around the 1947 Partition of India, Partitions (Holt/Metropolitan, 2011) and The Map and the Scissors (HarperCollins India, 2022). His first children’s book also focuses on Indian history and is entitled Heroes the Colour of Dust (Puffin India, 2022). Majmudar has also penned a tragicomic, magical realist fable of Indian soldiers during World War I, Soar (Penguin India, 2020). The Abundance (Holt/Metropolitan, 2013), by contrast, is a work of contemporary realism exploring Indian-American life. Majmudar’s long-form fiction has garnered rave reviews from NPR’s All Things Considered, The Wall Street Journal, Good Housekeeping, and The Economist, as well as starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist; his short fiction won a 2017 O. Henry Prize.
MYTHOLOGY: Majmudar’s work in Hindu mythology includes a polyphonic Ramayana retelling, Sitayana (Penguin India, 2019), and The Book of Vows (Penguin India, 2023), the first volume in a trilogy that retells the ancient epic poem, Mahabharata. The forthcoming volumes are entitled The Book of Discoveries and The Book of Killings. He has also composed a forthcoming original mythological story cycle called The Later Adventures of Hanuman (Penguin India, 2024).
TRANSLATION: His work as a translator includes Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary (Knopf, 2018), available both in the United States and India.
Dr. Peter Mansoor
Dr. Peter Mansoor, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired), is the General Raymond E. Mason, Jr. Chair of Military History at The Ohio State University. He assumed this position in September 2008 after a 26-year career in the U.S. Army that culminated in his service as the executive officer to General David Petraeus, the Commanding General of Multi-National Force-Iraq.…
Read MoreDr. Peter Mansoor, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired), is the General Raymond E. Mason, Jr. Chair of Military History at The Ohio State University. He assumed this position in September 2008 after a 26-year career in the U.S. Army that culminated in his service as the executive officer to General David Petraeus, the Commanding General of Multi-National Force-Iraq. A 1982 distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy, Col. Mansoor served in a variety of command and staff positions in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East during his military career. Dr. Mansoor holds a Masters and Ph.D. in military history from The Ohio State University, a Masters in Strategic Studies from the Army War College, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Military Academy. He is the author of The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945, winner of the Society for Military History distinguished book award and the Army Historical Society distinguished book award in 2000; and Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq, winner of the Ohioana Library Association nonfiction book of the year award in 2009. His most recent work is Surge, a finalist for the inaugural Guggenheim-Lehrman Military History Prize.
Jacqueline Marino
Jacqueline Marino teaches feature writing and other courses in the magazine sequence at Kent State University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Her nonfiction stories and essays have appeared in many publications including Cleveland Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction.
Stephen Markley
Stephen Markley is an author, screenwriter, and journalist. His previous books include the memoir “Publish This Book” and the travelogue “Tales of Iceland.” His short fiction, interviews, essays, and journalism can be found scattered across the internet.
John Matthias
John Matthias was born in 1941 in Columbus, Ohio. For many years he taught at the University of Notre Dame and continues to serve as poetry editor of Notre Dame Review. He has been a Visiting Fellow in poetry at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and lived for much of the 70s and 80s in East Anglia. His books of verse include Turns, Crossing, Northern Summer, A Gathering of Ways, Swimming at Midnight, Beltane at Aphelion, Pages, Working Progress, Working Title, New Selected Poems and Kedging. He has also published translations from the Swedish, editions of David Jones’ work, and a volume of literary criticism, Reading Old Friends. In 1998 Robert Archambeau edited Word Play Place, a selection of essays on Matthias’s work. Another book of essays on his poetry appeared in 2011 in the Salt Companion series, edited by Joe Francis Doerr. Since 2010, Shearsman has republished all of his poetry in the volumes Trigons (2010), Collected Shorter Poems Vol. 2 (2011), Collected Longer Poems (2012) and Collected Shorter Poems Vol. 1 (2013). In 2011 Shearsman also pubished his essay collection, Who was Cousin Alice?
Susannah Maynard
Susannah Maynard is a lifelong animal lover, animal rescue advocate, and pet photographer. Long before she picked up her first camera, she captured images of the world around her with a pad of paper and a box of crayons. From her early childhood, Susannah was surrounded by a house full of cats, beginning her lifelong love of animals. After trying a variety of careers, from fundraising to publishing, Susannah was at a career crossroads when, in 2011, she adopted her heart dog, Mr. Bojangles, and discovered there was such a profession as pet photographer. Deciding to turn her love of both photography and pets into a career, Pet Love Photography was born. Susannah has spent the last several years photographing hundreds of rescue and client pets. She primarily works on location to make sure that her pet subjects are as comfortable as possible in environments that are familiar to them.
Katie Mazeika
Katie Mazeika is an award-winning author and illustrator who can’t imagine a better job than making books. She loves creating stories based on real people and events. Katie is passionate about highlighting disabled voices in her work. She strongly believes all children should see themselves in books. Katie hopes her work as a creator and advocate creates a space to openly discuss disability and neurodiversity. She does this through presentations, panels, and workshops for educators, kidlit creators, and young readers. You can visit her online at http://www.katiemazeika.com.
Karen McClintock
Karen A. McClintock, PhD, is a psychologist specializing in family secrets and shame recovery. She is a national workshop leader and teaches human sexuality at Southern Oregon University. She is the author of four previous books, including Sexual Shame: An Urgent Call to Healing and Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations.