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.
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Jen Knox
Jen Knox is the author of We Arrive Uninvited (Steel Toe Books, 2023), which won the Steel Toe Books Award in prose, and After the Gazebo (Rain Mountain Press, 2015). Her short fiction and creative nonfiction can be found in journals such as Saturday Evening Post and McSweeney’s Internet Quarterly. She founded and runs Unleash Creatives, a holistic arts organization based in Ohio. Learn more at: jenknox.com
Wendy Koile
Wendy Koile has spent most of her life exploring the nooks and crannies of Ohio. When not traveling or writing, Wendy works full-time as the Director of Teaching and Learning at a community college in Ohio. She holds a masters degree in teaching and one in English. She currently has four books published with The History Press and is working on ideas for the next one.
Robert Kroeger
Dr. Robert Kroeger, a native of Youngstown, graduated from Ohio State University’s College of Dentistry, served four years of active duty in the US Navy, ending with the rank of lieutenant commander. He and his late wife Brenda moved to Cincinnati where they raised five children and Dr. Kroeger practiced general dentistry from 1977 to 2010, when he retired. He and his wife Laura also live in Cincinnati, where they enjoy spending time with nine grandchildren. [INSERT IMAGE A-63 CAPTION: Robert Kroeger. Photograph, David Bimschleger] Dr. Kroeger is a second-generation artist, though, unlike his father Francis, who held an art degree from Notre Dame, his professional art career blossomed later in life. Though he did not immediately follow in his father’s footsteps, Robert’s career as a dentist allowed him to study color values and facial esthetic principles in smile design. He is the author of Historic Barns of Ohio, a book that features a barn, its painting, and its essay in each of Ohio’s 88 counties. Dr. Kroeger has also written two books on dentistry and seven books on golf in Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland, including To The 14th Tee, The Links of Wales, The Golf Courses of Old Tom Morris, Golf on the Links of Ireland, Golf on the Links of England, Complete Guide to the Golf Courses of Scotland, and The Secrets of Islay. This is his second book on old barns but hopefully not his last. Learn more at: https://www.barnart.weebly.com/
John W. Kropf
John Kropf is the author of Unknown Sands: Journeys Around the World’s Most Isolated Country that Publisher’s Weekly praised as a fascinating narrative bound to hook adventurers. His writing has appeared in appeared The Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Kropf was born in Sandusky and raised in Erie County, Ohio. He is an attorney in the Washington, DC. area. http://compulsivelyaimless.blogspot.com/
Nan Kuhlman
Nan Kuhlman is an author, freelance writer, and part-time university professor who lives in Los Angeles but still thinks of rural northwest Ohio as home. Her nonfiction book Nontraditional: Life Lessons from a Community College tells of her time spent as an adjunct writing professor at a small community college there and intertwines the stories of her nontraditional students with her own nontraditional start in higher education. The lesson of Nontraditional is about life’s circuitous nature and how the indirect way may be the best route to get where you need to go.
Nan currently works as a technical writer in Los Angeles, but because her freelancing career has spanned more than two decades, she can’t break her streak and continues to freelance in her free time. You can read her eclectic collection of writing at http://www.nankuhlman.com.
Peter Kurtz
Peter Kurtz was born in New Jersey but raised in Mansfield, Ohio. He obtained a B.S. in Journalism from Ohio University and currently lives in Cincinnati. He’s worked as a jazz disc jockey, freelance writer, and primarily as an engineering technical writer. Kurtz’s books include Bluejackets in the Blubber Room (University of Alabama Press), praised by both maritime and Civil War historians; a trail-hiking memoir, Evergreen Dreaming; and the Nick Montaigne detective mysteries, Black Jackknife and The Shades Dripped Red, the latter of which was inspired by an unsolved true crime in Kurtz’s old neighborhood. His books have earned glowing reviews from Publishers Weekly and Midwest Book Review.
Kurtz enjoys marathon running, backpacking, reading, travel, playing guitar, and enjoying his three granddaughters. He cites his greatest achievements (besides raising a family) as completing a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, and reading all of Herman Melville’s sea books several times over. Learn more at: https://peterkurtz.wordpress.com
Barbara Kussow
Barbara Kussow is the author of a novel, PORTRAIT OF ANNIE, and two novellas, THE SPENCERS OF OHIO; AN ABOLITIONIST FAMILY IN THE CIVIL WAR ERA and THE MERLIN SUBSIDIARY. She is a contributor to WRITING AFTER RETIREMENT (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014; ed. by Carol Smallwood and Christine Redman-Waldeyer). Poetry and short stories have been published in several print and online venues; book reviews and book columns have appeared in local papers. She edited and published Still Crazy, a literary magazine that published works written by and/or about people over age 50, from 2008-2017.Barbara’s education includes a B.S. and M.Ed. in English Education at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and an M.L.S. from Kent State University, Ohio.
Stephen Kuusisto
Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a professorship in the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.
Paula J. Lambert
Paula J. Lambert has published nine collections of poetry, including As If This Did Not Happen Every Day (Sheila-Na-Gig 2024) and Uncertainty (The Only Hope We Have) (Bottlecap 2023). Also a visual artist, small-press publisher, and literary translator, her work has been recognized by PEN America and supported by the Ohio Arts Council, Greater Columbus Arts Council, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband Michael Perkins, a philosopher and technologist. More at http://www.paulajlambert.com