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
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.
Allison Pitinii Davis
Allison Pitinii Davis is the author of _Line Study of a Motel Clerk_
(Baobab Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award’s
Berru Award for Poetry. This collection explores immigration, labor,
gender, and diaspora in Ohio’s Rust Belt. She is also the author of
_Poppy Seeds_ (Kent State University Press, 2013), winner of the Wick
Poetry Chapbook Prize. She holds an MFA from Ohio State University and
fellowships from Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program, the Fine
Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Severinghaus Beck Fund for
Study at Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Her poetry has appeared in Best
American Poetry 2016, The New Republic, Crazyhorse, The Missouri Review,
Sycamore Review, Connotation Press, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere.
She is pursuing a PhD at The University of Tennessee, where she serves
as a poetry editor of Grist.
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
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.
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/
Jason Prufer
Jason Prufer received his bachelor’s degree in art history from Kent State University and has been employed by the Kent State University Library for nearly 20 years. He has written for the Cleveland Free Times, Kent Patch, and numerous historical rock and roll blogs. Since 2011 Prufer has also worked as publicist and social media manager for the Numbers Band, an experimental rock band formed in Kent in 1969.
Damaris Puñales-Alpízar
Dr. Damaris Puñales–Alpízar is Professor of Hispanic Studies, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Director of the International Studies program, and the Executive Sponsor of Alianza Latina/Latin Alliance at Case Western Reserve University. She studied Journalism at the University of Havana and has worked as a journalist in Cuba, Belize, and Mexico. In Belize, she founded Conexión, the first bilingual and trans-border newspaper, and in Mexico, she was a correspondent for regional and national mass media outlets. She directs two study abroad programs at CWRU in Spain.
Her scholarly publications include the books La Maldita Circunstancia, Ensayos Sobre Literatura Cubana (2020) and Escrito en Cirílico: El Ideal Soviético en la Cultura Cubana Posnoventa (2012). Her next book is coming out by the National Autonomous University of Mexico with the title Códigos Rojos: Geopolíticas de la Traducción Durante la Guerra Fría, Cuba y el Bloque del Este. She has edited the volumes Asedios al Caimán Letrado: Literatura y Poder en la Revolución Cubana (with Emilio J. Gallardo Saborido and Jesús Gómez de Tejada, 2018) and El Atlántico Como Frontera: Mediaciones Culturales Entre Cuba y España (2014). She has coordinated the special dossiers “Cuba: A Cultural Prospection,” for the academic journal Cuadernos del Sur–Letras, (National University of the South, Argentina, 2021), and “Cuba: The Soviet Flavor of a Tropical Island. A Visit 20 Years Later,” for La Habana Elegante: Revista Semestral de Literatura y Cultura Cubana, Caribeña, Latinoamericana, y de Estética No. 51 (Spring-Summer 2012). Her scholarly articles have appeared in leading journals in the United States, Cuba, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Slovenia, Argentina, Canada, Peru, France and Spain, such as Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Caribbean Studies, Revista Iberoamericana, La Habana Elegante, Kamchatka, Vallejo&Co, Revista de Letras, Artelogie, Cuadernos del Sur–Letras, Teatro, Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, etc.
In 2021, Dr. Puñales-Alpízar was one of the two faculty awardees at Case Western Reserve University for the Flora Stone Mather Woman of Achievement and Mather Spotlight Award. That same year, she won an Expanding Horizons Initiative Grant to organize the international conference “Translation Practices during the Cold War: A Multidisciplinary Approach.” In 2018, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Russia to complete research for her current scholarly project on the geopolitics of socialist translations. During the 2013-2015 period, Puñales-Alpízar was elected delegate from the Great Lakes region to the Modern Language Association. Regularly, she writes and translates for the Collective Arts Network Journal, CAN, in Cleveland, and publishes op-ed pieces in a Spanish newspaper. She was a Member of the Board of LatinUS Theater Company in Cleveland, and is the founder and president of the non-profit organization Trasatlántica. Poetry and Scholarship (https://trasatlantica.org/). She is also a member of the Editorial Board of the academic journal Caribe.
Sandra Harrington Quick
I was privileged for 30 years to offer my teaching gifts and talents to the children of Columbus (OH) Public Schools and other Ohio schools as a teacher, High School Principal and Supervisor. I taught English, drama and speech, and directed several student productions. I incorporated my own theatre company, Our History Awakens® in 2010. Our mission is Commemorating the African-American experience in American History through living history and engaging educational activities “…lest we forget”. I am the author and publisher of two books in a series, Our History Awakens: Creating My Living History Avatar. And Our History Awakens: Creating Your Living History Avatar. Both are available on Amazon.com
I developed the curriculum for, instructed in and performed in the 2010 The Ohio State University African and African-American Studies summer residential program. Since 2009, I continue to be a featured performer for The State of OHIO’s Black History Month celebration in the Ohio Statehouse Museum. I have performed at The Fair at New Boston, an authentic 18th re-enactment fair in Springfield, OH for five years. I instructed as a Professional Teaching Artists through the Adaptation, Integration, and the Arts Program through The State Organization on Arts and Disability, VSA Ohio. I am a proud founding member of the production company, We’ve Known Rivers®: Timeless Stories in the Black Experience along with Dr. Annette Jefferson and Mr. Anthony Gibbs. As of 2019 We’ve Known Rivers® has performed for 10 years as the OHIO Statehouse’s Black History Month Program.
From the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning, Cleveland OH I earned my Teaching Artist Professional Development Module 1 Badge for Program Development which qualifies me to address Domains of Positive Youth, Multiple Learning Styles, and Positive Reinforcement Techniques during my K-12 classroom performances.
Eman Quotah
Eman Quotah grew up in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Toast, The Establishment, Book Riot, and other publications. She lives with her family near Washington, D.C. Bride of the Sea is her first novel.