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): Adult
Celeste Parsons
Celeste Parsons lives outside of Nelsonville in a log house built on a former dairy farm, with her husband
Jim, her Westie dog Spook, and a revolving population of deer, turkeys, chipmunks, hummingbirds, and
other wildlife. She enjoys gardening, anything having to do with fabric or thread, reading, and bicycle
touring with Jim on their tandem bike (64,000 miles since the year 2000, and counting). She is also an
enthusiastic member of the ABC Players and thinks of Stuart’s Opera House as her second home. She
has written poems, plays, technical documentation, and newspaper articles since childhood. This is her
first published book.
Karen A. Patterson
Award winning author Karen A. Patterson has recently released Recipes from Ohio’s Must Places to Eat, the second book in her Ohio travel series and the companion to Eating Your Way Across Ohio. She has also written Herbs for All Seasons and a World War II memoir entitled Allies Forever: The Life and Times of an American Prisoner of War. As a syndicated columnist for the Gannett and Thompson newspapers, she has penned hundreds of articles on travel, food, and gardening.
Emily Patterson
Emily Patterson is the author of So Much Tending Remains (Kelsay Books), a collection of poems chronicling the first year of motherhood. She received her B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University—where she was awarded the F.L. Hunt Prize for Most Promising Creative Writer, the Marie Drennan Prize for Poetry, and the Class of 1870 Memorial Prize for Creative Nonfiction—and her M.A. in Literature for Children and Young Adults from The Ohio State University. Emily is the 2022 contest judge for the Minerva Rising Press poetry chapbook competition, “Dare to Be . . .” In 2021, her poem “On the Playground, I Think About How a Mother Is Like a Moth” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Emily’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Rust and Moth, Mom Egg Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Sunlight Press, Literary Mama, The Mum Poem Press, Thimble Literary Magazine, and elsewhere.
Donna Alice Patton
Donna Alice Patton is a gardening enthusiast from the Midwest who has won numerous ribbons and trophies for her flowers and vegetables. In the winter when she can’t play in the dirt, she soothes her creativity by writing instead. She is the author of five books for children including: Saddle Up! Based on a real California horse camp and Snipped in the Bud: A Tale from the Garden of Mysteries. Find out more at: http://www.donnaalicepatton.com.
C. L. Pauwels
C.L. (Cyndi) Pauwels is hoping that, as she plows through her sixth decade, she’ll eventually figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. Her crime fiction Toledo Trilogy (Forty & Out (2014), Burned Bridges (2018), and Unwelcome Ties (2023)) draws on her nearly twenty years’ experience working in the criminal justice field in Toledo, Ohio.
C. F. Payne
C. F. Payne has illustrated more than a dozen picture books, including the New York Times bestselling Mousetronaut by astronaut Mark Kelly, the Texas Bluebonnet winner Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy, written by Phil Bildner, and the New York Times bestsellers The Remarkable Farkle McBride and Micawber, both by John Lithgow. He teaches at the Columbus College of Design, where he is the chair of the Illustration Department. Payne lives with his wife and children in Cincinnati, Ohio. Visit him online at CFPayne.com.
Sue Macy is the acclaimed author of many books for young readers, among them the award-winning Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom; Basketball Belles: How Two Teams and One Scrappy Player Put Women’s Hoops on the Map; and Bylines: A Photobiography of Nellie Bly. A former editor at Scholastic, she lives in Englewood, New Jersey.
David Pepper
Brian Petkash
Brian Petkash was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Tampa and his stories have appeared in Midwestern Gothic and Southword, among other publications. He currently lives in Tampa, Florida, where he remains an avid fan of Cleveland sports.
Susan Petrone
Susan Petrone is the author of the The Heebie-Jeebie Girl (2020,) The Super Ladies (2018), Throw Like a Woman (2015), and A Body at Rest (2009), which won a bronze medal for regional fiction from the Independent Publishers Book Awards (IPPY). The Super Ladies was a General Fiction finalist in Foreward Reviews’ 2018 Book of the Year Awards. She is a recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for FY 2020.
Susan’s short fiction has been published by Glimmer Train, Muse, Conclave, Cleveland Review, and Whiskey Island. Her short story, “Monster Jones Wants to Creep You Out” (Conclave, 2010) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her non-fiction has appeared in CoolCleveland, Belt magazine, and ESPN.com. She is also one of the co-founders and former president of Literary Cleveland (litcleveland.org).