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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Isaiah Bealer
Isaiah Bealer is a Cincinnati, OH native. He is an versatile author, whose writing style specializes on catching the undivided attention of his readers. Harnessing the most out of his character’s traits, Isaiah is able to create an array of intriguing plots to manifest immaculate stories. Isaiah’s first published book is a fiction novel by the title of “Forever My Brother.” Although, he switches genres, his second published work titled, “The King In Me” is just as entertaining as his first. Isaiah’s overall objective through his writing is to inspire people around the world to reach the zenith of their full potential.
Janet Beard
Born and raised in East Tennessee, Janet Beard moved to New York to study screenwriting at NYU and went on to earn an MFA in creative writing from The New School. Her first novel, ‘Beneath the Pines’, was published in 2008, and her follow-up, ‘The Atomic City Girls’ became an international bestseller 2018. Janet’s latest novel, The Ballad of Laurel Springs, was published in October 2021. Janet has lived and worked in Australia, England, Boston, and Columbus, Ohio, where she is currently raising a daughter and working on a new novel.
Carrie Bebris
Carrie Bebris spent her childhood in Toledo before beginning her writing career as a journalist, college English teacher, and editor. After publishing two fantasy novels, she made her mystery debut with Pride and Prescience, which earned a place on the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association bestseller list and was named one of the five best mysteries of the year by Library Journal. Successive books in the series have received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and won several awards, including the 2007 Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence in romantic suspense. Bebris holds a master’s degree in English literature and is a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She speaks locally and nationally about Austen, writing, and publishing, and is on the faculty of the Antioch Writers Workshop in Yellow Springs. When not writing, Bebris likes to travel and indulge in her love of all things British. She now lives in the Dayton area.
Kimberly Beckett
Ever since she can remember, Kimberly Beckett has loved horses. It wasn’t until she got her first job however, that could afford to buy her first horse, and she hasn’t been without at least one ever since. Kimberly has now found a way to combine her love of horses with her love of romance by writing her own version of equine-facilitated happily ever afters. She truly believes that Horses Heal Hearts.
Joe David Bellamy
Born on December 29, 1941, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Joe David Bellamy was the son of Orin Ross and Beulah Pearl (Zutavern) Bellamy. He attended Duke University, 1959-1961; he received a BA in Literature from Antioch College in 1964 and received an MFA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1969. Bellamy married Connie Sue Arendsee in 1964. Professor, writer and poet, Bellamy taught at several colleges and universities, including the University of Iowa, Virginia Wesleyan College, St. Lawrence University, and George Mason University, and was Whichard Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at East Carolina University. His literary papers are archived at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Joe David Bellamy died suddenly on August 5, 2014 in Sanford, Florida.
The founding editor of Fiction International magazine (1973), Bellamy was a former president of both the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines; he also served as Director of the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts (1990-1992). His articles, fiction, poetry and reviews have been published in The Atlantic,The Nation, Harper’s, Paris Review, Narrative, The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Partisan Review, Story, North American Review, The Washington Post Book World, and more than sixty others.
In 1989 Bellamy won the Editors’ Book Award from Pushcart Press for his novel Suzi Sinzinnati, and Atomic Love, his 1993 collection of short stories, was an AWP Award Series selection. He also authored/edited sixteen other books, including Green Freedom, 2012; The Lost Saranac Interviews: Forgotten Conversations with Famous Writers, 2007; New World Extra, Literary Luxuries: American Writing at the End of the Millennium, 1995; American Poetry Observed: Poets On Their Work, 1988; The Frozen Sea: Poems, 1988; Olympic Gold Medalist: Poems, 1978; Superfiction, or The American Story Transformed, 1975; The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative Writers, 1974, and three genealogy books: Kindred Spirits: 400 Years of an American Family, 2011; Island in the Sky: Bellamy and Allied Families, 2010, and The Bellamys of Early Virginia, 2005.
Connie Bergstein Dow
Connie Bergstein Dow began dancing when she was four, and has been dancing ever since. After attending Denison University, and earning an MFA from the University of Michigan, she danced professionally in the US, Venezuela, and Guatemala. During her career as a dance educator, she has taught dance to three-year-olds, to senior adults in wheelchairs, and every age in between. In addition to her picture book From A to Z with Energy! (Free Spirit Publishing, 2019), she has written two books for teachers published by Redleaf Press: Dance, Turn, Hop, Learn! Enriching Movement Activities for Preschoolers, and One, Two, What Can I Do? Dance and Music for the Whole Day. She also writes articles for magazines and journals, and verses for Highlights magazines.
Ted Bernard
Ted Bernard has been a faculty member at Ohio University for over thirty years. He has done stints abroad as a senior lecturer and Senior Fulbright Scholar at Kenyatta University, a visiting scholar at Populations Studies and Research Institute of Nairobi, a visiting research professor and Rotary International Fellow at Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Center in Botswana, and an external examiner at the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Botswana. Bernard’s teaching areas include Sustainability, American conservation history, natural resource management, and global environmental issues.
Connie Berry
Connie Berry is the author of the Kate Hamilton Mysteries, set in the UK and featuring an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes. Like her protagonist, Connie was raised by antiques dealers who instilled in her a passion for history, fine art, and travel. In 2019 Connie won the IPPY Gold Medal for Mystery and was a finalist for the Agatha Award’s Best Debut. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and is on the board of the Guppies and her local Sisters in Crime chapter. Besides reading and writing mysteries, Connie loves history, foreign travel, cute animals, and all things British. She lives in Ohio with her husband and adorable Shih Tzu, Emmie. You can learn more about Connie and her books at her website http://www.connieberry.com.