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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Noor Hindi
Noor Hindi (she/her/hers) is a Palestinian-American poet and reporter. She is a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow is her debut collection of poems. She lives in Dearborn. Learn more at: https://noorhindi.com/
Conrade C. Hinds
Conrade C. Hinds was born in Nashville and graduated from Ball State University, where he studied architecture and industrial technology. He has lived in Ohio for forty years. A registered architect and a retired projects manager with the City of Columbus Department of Public Utilities, he is also a retired adjunct faculty member in the Engineering Technology Department at Columbus State Community College. His latest books is History of Buckeye Inventions, and he has published three other books: The Great Columbus Experiment of 1908, Columbus and the Great Flood of 1913, and Lost Circuses of Ohio.
Janice Hisle
Janice Hisle established herself as a bulldog news reporter—with a heart—during more than two decades as a professional journalist. She would fight, scratch and claw for public records yet wrote tragic stories with a soft touch.
After more than two decades as a full-time writer for daily newspapers, Janice became a freelance writer. She spent eighteen months writing and researching her first book, Submerged: Ryan Widmer, his drowned bride and the justice system.
As a writer for The Cincinnati Enquirer, Janice covered every aspect of the Widmer bathtub-drowning case through three spellbinding trials. Unanswered questions compelled her to write Submerged in time for the tenth anniversary of the case in August 2018. The book’s editor was her former Enquirer colleague, Peter Bronson, who also wrote the introduction and helped Janice publish the work through his company, Chilidog Press.
During her 15 years at the Enquirer, Janice earned awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and from The Press Club of Cleveland. Her award-winning work included articles on teen-driving safety, political campaign contributions, personality profiles, breaking news, investigative database projects and the Widmer case. Janice also became the first Enquirer reporter to do “stand-up” video news reports for the Enquirer’s website, Cincinnati.com.
Janice participated in a panel discussion about the Widmer case at Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University, in 2010, and also gave a presentation about the case at the University of Cincinnati’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in 2011.
Janice has been a presenter for a half-dozen police-media relations workshops, including two in 2017-18. She has appeared in video news reports on Cincinnati.com and on the Investigation Discovery network.
Janice formerly worked for The Dayton Daily News, The Vindicator (Youngstown, Ohio), and The Record-Courier (Kent-Ravenna, Ohio), and is a current member of The Authors Guild.
Janice graduated summa cum laude from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, with a bachelor’s degree in journalism/news-editorial.
Her work has focused mainly on public safety and criminal justice, including coverage of dozens of murder cases, with occasional articles on business, health and fitness. When she’s not writing, she is a sought-after nationally certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor.
Her husband, Michael, is a former TV sportscaster and producer. He went on to become a nationally recognized executive sales representative for a Fortune 100 company. He also is a competitive natural bodybuilder and recently attained professional status in that sport.
Kate Hoefler
Kate Hoefler was born and still lives and writes in the rolling hills of Ohio’s Appalachia. She is the author of numerous books and loves the delicate tightrope that picture books stand on between the light that is and the light that could be. Three of her recent books, Rabbit and the Motorbike, Courage Hats, and In The Dark were Ohioana Floyd’s Pick Honor books. Her newest book, The Couch In The Yard, might allow readers to travel above and beyond their couches (wink-wink). She loves small dogs, pottery, being an introvert, and cheese. Follow her on Instagram: @katehoefler
Annie Hogsett
Annie Hogsett Bio
Annie Hogsett grew up in a remarkably small town in West Virginia and earned her MA in eighteenth-century English literature from West Virginia University. With degree in hand, Annie ditched Keats and Wordsworth, followed a guy to Cleveland, and fell into an advertising agency where she learned how to write compelling fiction on a deadline. And how to swear.
Not counting an early attempt lost to the exercise of better judgment, Annie has completed five novels. Too Lucky to Live, the story of an accidental, and exceedingly lethal, 500-million-dollar MondoMegaJackpot— published by Poisoned Pen Press in May of 2017—was the first to see the light of readers. The second of her Somebody’s Bound To Wind Up Dead Mysteries, Murder to the Metal, was released in June of ‘18, and the third is slated to be published in October.
The tagline for Annie’s series is “Murder. Mayhem. Romance. Cleveland.” And it’s all that. When people ask her, “Where do you get your ideas?” she often says, “I steal them from the City of Cleveland.” For an idea-thieving writers of mysteries, Cleveland—gritty, funky, cool old town, loaded up with history and hardship, magnificence and malfeasance—keeps whispering, “Look! No. Really. Look!” So she does. Ask Annie where she got the first line of Too Lucky to Live, “You know you live in a rough neighborhood when somebody honks at a blind man in the crosswalk.” She’ll be happy to tell you where she found it.
Annie lives within splashing distance of Lake Erie in the neighborhood of Collinwood with her husband, Bill—the aforementioned guy—and their unfortunately aptly-named cat, Cujo.
Sara Holbrook
Sara Holbrook, a resident of Mentor, OH, is the author of over a dozen poetry books for children, teens and books for adults. Her newest book is a middle grade novel, The Enemy, historical fiction. She is a frequent speaker at schools and teacher conferences all over the world. Along with co-author Michael Salinger, she is also the author of four teacher professional books on poetry, vocabulary instruction, and performance.
Emmie J. Holland
Emmie J. Holland is a twenty-something-year-old mom and former third-grade teacher who writes romantic comedy books filled with witty writing, banter, romance, and all the feels. When she is not writing, she enjoys hiking, spending time outdoors, and hanging out with her family.
Kerrie Logan Hollihan
Author Kerrie Hollihan writes award-winning nonfiction for kids and teens. Her new book is BONES UNEARTHED!, third in the Creepy and True series for Abrams Books for Young Readers. Following GHOSTS UNVEILED! The first, MUMMIES EXPOSED!, garnered four four-star reviews.
Kerrie’s books have been honored as “notables” by the Children’s Book Council/National Council for the Social Studies and more. She’s especially thrilled that Mummies! is accessible for vision impaired readers through the Library of Congress. Her very first book, ISAAC NEWTON & PHYSICS FOR KIDS, has been printed in six languages.
Kerrie belongs to the highly regarded nonfiction author group iNK Think Tank and its interactive partner, Authors on Call – http://www.inkthinktank.org. Catch her three-minute talks about lots of things at iNK’s Nonfiction Minute, https://www.nonfictionminute.org.
Kerrie enjoys meeting young readers during school visits both in person and on the web. She offers kid-friendly activities with other nonfiction authors at Hands-on-Books, http://hands-on-books.blogspot.com/.
Kerrie also reaches out to inquisitive older adults–historical societies, book groups, and more–with programs speaking to their life experience. Get in touch on her contact page: https://kerriehollihan.com/contact/
Shannon Holly
Shannon is a Gen X author who grew up reading David Eddings, C.S. Lewis, Anne McCaffrey and watching Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. It’s no wonder she wrote a Star Trek meets Narnia fantasy adventure! That same sense of wonder and excitement she grew up with is what she’s devoted to giving her fans.
Angola Hone
Angola Hone is an independent author and all-twelve-grades done though homeschooling graduate. His debut series for middle grade and young adult fantasy readers, The Canid Chronology, released its first book in August 2024. He penned the original draft in notebooks almost a decade and a half ago, and never outgrew his love for children and YA fiction. To this day, he’s still nostalgic over favorite childhood books such as Redwall and Narnia, as well as stories from movies and video games such as Wall-E, Ratatouille, and Pokémon. As he begins his journey as an author, he hopes to capture the same themes of adventure, heroism, and loving self-sacrifice found in these tales for the next generation.