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
Nancy Roe Pimm
Nancy Roe Pimm is an award-winning author of many books and articles for children. In addition to Fly, Girl, Fly:Shaesta Waiz Soars Around the World. Pimm is the author of middle-grade biography The Jerrie Mock Story: The First Woman to Fly Solo Around the World. Pimm visits schools and organizations to encourage the next generation to believe in their dreams and to challenge the possibilities. She also teaches writing workshops, virtually and in-person. Pimm lives with her retired race-car driver husband in Plain City, Ohio. Nancy and Ed have three daughters and two grandsons. They share their home with two dogs, one cat, and one snake. To discover more of Pimm’s books, visit her website: http://www.nancyroepimm.com
Garin Pirnia
Garin Pirnia was born and raised in the rock-and-roll city of Dayton, Ohio. She has written about arts and culture for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Mental Floss, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Huffington Post, Eater, Paste Magazine, and many more publications. She is author of The Beer Cheese Book and screenwriter of The Finicky Cat, a short horror comedy that has won awards at film festivals and screenplay contests. Music, beer cheese, and cats―she does it all.
Elana Pitts
Elana is a writer who has been published in 6 anthologies under Lake Erie Ink (LEI) and read at the 2017 Cleveland Drafts. Her first book, Little Wolfpine, was self-published in 2021. In 2022, she read at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). She is currently working as a program assistant, going into schools to help students express themselves creatively as she continues her work on new installments while pursuing her creative writing degree. Learn more: https://elanapittsep.wixsite.com/website-3
Sandy Plunkett
Sandy Plunkett, a self-taught illustrator and comic book artist, came of age in New York City during the ‘60s and ‘70s. He began drawing for Marvel Comics at eighteen and throughout his ongoing career he has drawn for several other major publishers, including DC. His trademark look can be seen on countless posters, album covers, and political cartoons. He lives in Athens, Ohio.
Doug Powhida
Doug Powhida is an author, playwright, ghostwriter, and humorist from Westerville, Ohio. His efforts include the humorous parenting book Nobody Told Me: A Guide to Passable Parenting and I Love Me. Who Do You Love?, a self-published collection of humorous stories, lists, lies, and comics written secretly online under the pseudonym HolyJuan. In 2024, Powhida wrote the script and lyrics for Normies, a full-length musical about a world where everyone is Drag, except for the Normies, people who live basic lives and perform boring tasks on stage to entertain the Drags. Powhida has published online for over sixteen years both as the Fake Dispatch account on social media and HolyJuan.com. He has scripted over twenty short plays performed at MadLab Theatre, Cannon School in North Carolina, and at The Annual St. James Tavern Shorts Festivals. Powhida has been a mentor in The Young Writers Program for the past seven years, helping high school students to craft, workshop, revise, and submit short plays that are produced at MadLab Theatre. Powhida is married to Miss Sally and has two very passable children: Greg and Annie. Powhida’s next work, Everything Hurts and I Hate Everyone: A Guide to Growing Old Gracefully, will be published in 2025.
Michael Prelee
Michael Prelee is a crime and science-fiction author who grew up in rural Northeast Ohio and graduated from Youngstown State University. His first published work is the Milky Way Repo sci-fi crime series published by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy. He is also the author of the small-town Tim Abernathy Mystery Series, published by North Star Press. The first entry in the series is Murder in the Heart of It All. Lost Little Sister is the sequel.
Bryan Prosek
Bryan resides in Columbus, Ohio where he is a practicing business attorney with the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson PLLC. He enjoys board games and outdoor activities- hiking, biking, and camping- with his family. His first two novels, The Brighter the Stars and A Measure of Serenity, have been published by CamCat Publishing. His third novel, The Darker the Skies, also being published by CamCat, will be out in the November, 2022. In addition, he has published numerous articles in legal trade journals and magazines. In addition to practicing law and writing, Bryan is actively involved in the fight against human trafficking. He assists several nonprofit organizations that combat human trafficking at various levels both within the United States and around the world. He provides pro bono legal services to these organizations as well as volunteer work. He also sits on the Board of Directors of three such organizations. You can find more about Bryan at his website, http://www.bryankprosek.com, taking you to new worlds.
Bonnie Proudfoot
Bonnie Proudfoot moved to Athens, OH, in 1996. She is the author of Goshen Road, a novel (Swallow Press, 2020), which was Long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway Award, selected for Great Group Reads in 2020, and awarded Book of the Year for 2022 by WCONA. She was delighted to participate in Ohioana in 2020. Bonnie has published poetry, fiction, and short prose in many journals. Her first book of poems, Household Gods, was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, in September, 2022. Learn more at: https://bonnieproudfootblog.wordpress.com/
D.M. Pulley
Before becoming a full-time writer, D.M. Pulley worked as a Professional Engineer, rehabbing historic structures and conducting forensic investigations of building failures. Pulley’s structural survey of a vacant building in Cleveland inspired her debut novel, <i>The Dead Key</i>, the winner of the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The disappearance of a family member formed the basis for her second historical mystery, <i>The Buried Book</i>. Pulley’s third novel, <i>The Unclaimed Victim</i>, delves into the dark history behind Cleveland’s Torso Killer and is due out November 14, 2017. She lives in northeast Ohio with her husband, two children, and a dog named Hobo, and she is hard at work on her fourth book.