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
Kelly Sollinger
As a child, Kelly would spend hours cloud-watching in the fields or staring at the fish in the family pond. Back then, she drew and painted and wrote poetry, but, as many do, went on to something “safe” and “acceptable:” a career programming computers. As an adult, she began exploring the urges to paint and create, eventually leaving the safe zone to establish her art and writing practices. She continues to evolve as a creative on a daily basis and often expresses that transformation through poetry. Kelly has a BA in Computer Information Systems, an MA in Theology, and is currently pursuing training as a spiritual director. Her programming career began at NASA and spanned almost 30 years. She briefly worked in church ministry before setting out to establish Dancing Owl Studio. Nowadays she paints, writes, and creates to her heart’s content. DancingOwlStudio.com
Allegra Solomon
Allegra Solomon is a fiction writer who was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. She got her MFA from the University of Kentucky and her B.A. in Creative Writing from Ohio University. Her debut short story collection won the Kimbilio National Fiction prize and was a finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review/TTU First Book Prize. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and has appeared in The Georgia Review, TriQuarterly, American Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Lolwe, and more. Her debut short story collection There’s Nothing Left For You Here is forthcoming in 2025 with Four Way Books. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Anna Soter
Anna Soter is Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University, and Adjunct Professor at CCAD, and at Self-Design Graduate Institute (Washington State). Her academic specializations are applied linguistics, contrastive rhetoric, literary theory applications to young adult literature, and the role of language as a field of energy. She is founder of The Hospital Poets (USA and Australia), a regular feature in The Ohio State University’s Humanism in Medicine program. She is also faculty submissions editor of Ether Arts, the OSU College of Medicine’s Literary and Visual Annual Arts Magazine. Anna continues to serve as co-convener (with Fred Andrle and Charlene Fix) of The Hospital Poets. In 2014, she received the OSU Wexner Medical Center William Osler M.D. Award for her work and commitment to Medicine and the Arts since its 2009 inauguration, and the OSU Wexner Medical Center Medicine and the Arts Certificate of Recognition for exemplary contributions in bringing the arts into the lives of medical staff, patients and families.
Anna has been a frequent featured reader in a variety of Columbus and state poetry venues for many years. She has primarily published scholarly books and articles and individual poems. Breathing Spaces is her first poetry collection.
https://ehe.osu.edu/news/listing/emeritus-academy-recognizes-lifelong-scholars
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XjfBZh0AAAAJ&hl=en
Amy Spears
Amy Spears (she/her) graduated from Denison University with a degree in cinema and creative writing. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she is in her second decade as a skater with Ohio Roller Derby. She spent several years active in the leadership of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association and has given presentations, workshops and talks about the sport at Pecha Kecha Columbus, the Roller Derby World Summit, and Rollercon. Her digital essay (with Julie Driscoll) “Worlds Collide! facebook, family & George Costanza” was published in Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion, and her prose and poetry have appeared in Columbus Alive, Lynx Eye, and Wine X. A self-described “collector of hobbies,” she’ll try just about anything once.
Emily Spencer
Emily Spencer is the author of East Walnut Hills, winner of the Zone 3 Press Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Spencer is an assistant professor at Miami University.
Kezia Sproat
Kezia Sproat, a native of Chillicothe, raised her family in Columbus, teaching English and Comparative Literature at Ohio State, where her 1975 dissertation on Shakespeare immediately won a national competition. A member of Women’s Poetry Workshop for 25 years, she co-founded the Community Film Association in 1978, and coordinated a “Festival of Dionysus” poetry competition in City Council Chambers at the 1987 Greater Columbus Arts Festival. Dr. Sproat was editor at OSU Center for Human Resource Research 1978-1985; writer/editor, Creative Services at Abbott Labs 1987-1990; and coordinator, SCOPS South Central Ohio Preservation Society, 1993-2013.
In 1987 Dr. Sproat began a serious study of nonviolence and founded Highbank Farm Peace Education Center in 1994. Her response to 9/11, “A Short Course in Nonviolence,” won recognition from Morehouse College and membership in the Board of Sponsors of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Chapel in Atlanta. A handbook, Beginning Nonviolence, appeared in 2013.
Tuwyn, her first book of poetry, was written during her Columbus years. In 1998 she restored her childhood home, where she lives in Chillicothe. A second poetry collection, Eh Tih Zwell, is set to release December 2019. Also in the pipeline are her collected essays, Sisterhood in Shakespeare.
Jyotsna Sreenivasan
Jyotsna Sreenivasan is the author of the short story collection These Americans and the novel And Laughter Fell From the Sky. Both are about Indian Americans. She was selected as a Fiction Fellow for the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies. She received an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts. She was born and raised in Ohio. Her parents are immigrants from India. For information about Jyotsna as well as other writers who are children of immigrants, please see http://www.SecondGenStories.com.
Sarah Stankorb
Sarah Stankorb is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Disobedient Women. She was born near Youngstown, Ohio, and often found escape in books. She studied world religions and philosophy at Westminster College, a place surrounded by rolling Pennsylvania farm country. A chance to study abroad in Northern Ireland, then Israel further opened her eyes to how faith (and conflict) can shape people’s everyday existence. She earned her master’s degree from University of Chicago’s Divinity School, where she studied ethics and South Asian religion and history. Hundreds of her pieces have been featured in publications, including: VICE, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and others. Her beat spans religion, politics, gender, and power, but is informed by questions of basic morality. She’s more fun than all this sounds. Sarah lives in Ohio with her husband and two children, and she writes a few times a month about the quirks of American faith at In Polite Company via Substack.
Dorri Steinhoff
Dorri Steinhoff grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago where she developed a love of nature, art and architecture. She met Joe Kuspan while in graduate school in Cincinnati. Their common interest in art and architecture led to numerous design and renovation projects including two boutique shops in the Short North Art District of Columbus, Ohio and five central Ohio homes. They are currently enjoying watching the seasons change at Glenbrow with their two daughters, Maren and Sofia, while continuing to restore the 1964 Glenbrow tower.
Dior J. Stephens
Dior J. Stephens is a proud Midwestern pisces poet. He is the author of the chapbooks SCREAMS & lavender, 001, and CANNON!, all with Ghost City Press. Dior holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Philosophy program at the University of Cincinnati. CRUEL/CRUEL is his debut collection of poetry.