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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Doug Motz
Doug Motz is the Past President of the Columbus Historical Society and continues to give tours of the core city for CHS. He is the co-author Kahiki Supper Club: A Polynesian Paradise in Columbus. He writes a “History Lesson” column for the website columbusunderground.com and gives a monthly local history quiz on the local ABC affiliate WSYX’ morning television program, Good Day Columbus. When not researching Columbus History, he spends his time singing with the Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus which he serves as Vice-President.
David Mould
David Mould, professor emeritus of media arts and studies at Ohio University, has traveled widely in Asia and southern Africa as a trainer, consultant, and researcher, and has written articles and essays for newspapers, magazines and online media. Born in the UK, he worked as a newspaper and TV journalist before moving to the US in 1978. Postcards from the Borderlands is his third book on travel, history and culture. Kirkus Reviews describes him as “A genial travel guide … an academic who does not write like an academic.”
Chiquita Mullins Lee
Chiquita Mullins Lee is an Arts Learning coordinator for the Ohio Arts Council (OAC) where she coordinates the Arts Partnership and Big Yellow School Bus grant programs and Ohio’s Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest. Formerly of Atlanta, she has over twenty years of experience in broadcast production and programming and worked as a public television producer/director in Nashville, Tennessee.…
Read MoreChiquita Mullins Lee is an Arts Learning coordinator for the Ohio Arts Council (OAC) where she coordinates the Arts Partnership and Big Yellow School Bus grant programs and Ohio’s Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest. Formerly of Atlanta, she has over twenty years of experience in broadcast production and programming and worked as a public television producer/director in Nashville, Tennessee. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, a Master of Arts degree from Ohio University, and a second master’s degree from The Ohio State University.
Chiquita has served as the chair and Midwest regional coordinator for the Arts Education Working Group, in association with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and has served on the Arts Education and partnership review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts. As a teaching artist for OAC’s Artist-in-Residence program, she engaged students throughout Ohio in creative writing activities. She won individual artist/excellence awards in fiction and playwriting from the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) and in fiction and nonfiction from OAC. She was writer-in-residence at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia. Her nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have appeared in national literary journals and her work is featured on the PBS American Portrait project, For My People: The Re-Mix. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is featured on the Long Street Cultural Wall in Columbus, Ohio. She hosted the Emmy award-winning program, Traditions – Ohio Heritage Fellows produced by Think-TV in Dayton. She writes and performs with Columbus-based Wild Women Writing, and recently performed in the plays, Twelve Hours and The Shakespeare Club by Dave Carley, and Lost Lake by David Auburn. She portrayed Venus in William Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and appeared in PAST PRODUCTIONS’ presentation of Sisters by Marsha Jackson.
Chiquita co-wrote 12, a three-woman show about girls on the threshold of womanhood, and Myrlie, Coretta and Betty: the Mothers of the Civil Rights Movement, in which she plays Coretta Scott King. Chiquita’s critically acclaimed play, Pierce to the Soul, premiered at CATCO, toured central Ohio with A Portable Theatre Company, and was featured in the 2019 History in ACTion Playwright’s Festival, which also presented her monologue, Ms. Morrison Speaks to Pilate from Song of Solomon. A member of New Covenant Believers Church, Chiquita leads Word Warriors creative writing ministry. Her picture book, YOU GOTTA MEET MR. PIERCE, co-authored with Carmella Van Vleet and illustrated by Jennifer Mack-Watkins is published by Kokila Books, an imprint of Penguin/Random House.
Learn more at: https://www.chiquitamullinslee.com/
Patricia Colleen Murphy
Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, published as a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection. Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Brian Michael Murphy
Brian Michael Murphy is the author of We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2022. He is Dean of the College at Bennington College, Managing and Nonfiction Editor of Northwest Review, and Director of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. His essays and poems have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Lapham’s Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Media-N, Narrative, and in Italian translation in Ácoma. A Fulbright Scholar, his work has also been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Ohio Arts Council. He is a founding board member of Outpost, a residency for BIPOC writers from the U.S. and Latin America. Learn more here: https://www.brianmichaelmurphy.com/
Deni Naffziger
Deni Naffziger is the author of Desire to Stay, poems (Stockport Flats Press, 2014), Strange Bodies, poems (Shadelandhouse Modern Press, 2023), and she co-authored Revenants: A Story of Many Lives, which was commissioned by the Houston-Hardin school district and supported with an Ohio Arts Council special projects grant. She edited Riverwind literary magazine, a national publication out of Hocking College, from 1986 – 2003. Naffziger, a Fulbright Scholar, is a retired professor (Hocking College, Ohio University). She currently serves as poet-in-residence at the Passion Works Collaborative Arts Studio in Athens, Ohio.
Dara Naraghi
Dara Naraghi was born in Iran and educated in the United States. His graphic novel trilogy Persia Blues has been praised by Publishers Weekly and the Midwest Book Review, has been nominated for awards by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), and won a S.P.A.C.E. Prize for best graphic novel. His other notable graphic novels include the Terminator Salvation official movie prequel, and Witch & Wizard: Battle for Shadowland (both New York Times Bestsellers), as well as works for Image Comics, IDW Publishing, Dark Horse, and DC Comics. Dara is also a founding member of the comic book writers/artists collective known as PANEL, with whom he has produced 20 volumes of their comics anthology. Dara lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife, daughter, and the world’s sweetest hound dog. Visit him online at http://www.daranaraghi.com/
Samuel Narh
Samuel Narh is an award-winning children’s book author. His books, A Kite for Melia and Milko, were created with co-author Freda Narh. He enjoys painting pictures with words using his stories, which are meant to touch and reach people across the world. Learn more at: https://www.samuelnarh.com/
Elizabeth Neal
Elizabeth Neal is a writer, editor, and digital strategist who lives in Columbus, OH, with her husband, daughter, and two rescue mutts.