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
Sara Moore Wagner
Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize for her manuscript Swan Wife (expected late summer 2022). She the author of the poetry manuscript Hillbilly Madonna (2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript prize winner), a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Sixth Finch, Waxwing, Nimrod, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. She lives in West Chester Ohio with her husband Jon, and children Cohen, Daisy, and Vivienne. Learn more at: https://www.saramoorewagner.com/
Corrinne Walker
Corrinne Walker, a certified life coach, and motivational speaker helps individuals understand that life experiences that hurt do not always mean that they are wrong. That everyone has the power to choose to see difficulties as signs that a few battles need to take place, that there is a need to clear some personal obstacles, so some space can be created for answers, light, and love to enter their life.
Also Corrinne Walker is the writer of Corrinne Walker is out of this world part I and II, Lashonna Cargin Dealing with OCD Revised Edition, and Lashonna Cargin Dividived, Lashonna Cargin Dealing With OCD part I and II, Lashonna Cargin Dealing With OCD part I and II combined and last Adventures of Sneaky & Lashonna.
You can visit her website at https://walker-and-associate-life-coaching.business.site
Laura Maylene Walter
Laura Maylene Walter is a writer and editor in Cleveland. Her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, The Masters Review, and many other publications. She has been a Tin House Scholar, a recipient of the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant, and a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, the Chautauqua Institution, and Art Omi: Writers. Laura works as a writer and editor for Cleveland Public Library, serves as editor-in-chief of Literary Cleveland’s Gordon Square Review, and blogs for the Kenyon Review. Body of Stars is her first novel.
David Wanczyk
I am a nonfiction writer (Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind) and literary journal editor (New Ohio Review), and I have taught English at Ohio University for the last 13 years. After studying at Holy Cross, I got my Masters in Poetry and Ph.D. in Creative Nonfiction at OU in Athens, where I continue to live with my wife Megan, my daughter, Natalie, my son, Benjamin, and the family heirloom—an autographed Pedro Martinez hat.
I’ve published somewhat widely, with poems in a dozen journals and essays in another half-dozen, and a couple scholarly articles about British fiction. In 2009, I began writing about unorthodox sports, which led to pieces in Salon, Slate, and theclassical.org, and eventually brought me in contact with Beep Baseball, or baseball for the blind.
In 2012, I watched my first Beep Baseball game, and I have followed the National Beep Baseball Association consistently ever since, reporting on the annual World Series and on the ups and downs of blind ballplayers for the Boston Globe Magazine, Texas Monthly, and Hobart. Some of the players came to call me “Book Dave,” and I’m happy to have that book, after quite a few years of revision, forthcoming from Ohio University’s Swallow Press.
Growing up in Western Massachusetts, I was a natural and diehard Red Sox fan, and I fancied myself a great young prospect. One Saturday morning, though, I gave up 27 runs in an inning, and (very slowly) I came to recognize that my future in sports was going to depend on a pen rather than a bat. While following Beep Baseball, I found that what I’m really interested in is the underdog story, and the search for unexpected, uncanny glory. While I covered those topics—once speaking about them on Taiwanese radio—I eventually realized that my obsessive interest in the sport was a way for me to think about the rigors of young parenthood, too, and about the role impracticality can play, and maybe needs to play, in my life.
Through my interviews with approximately 100 participants, and my travels to three countries to meet Beep Ballers, I developed a rapport with the players and sought only to tell an engaging story about them that refused to pigeonhole or patronize.
Elissa Washuta
Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. She is the author of White Magic, My Body Is a Book of Rules, and Starvation Mode. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She’s a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient, a Creative Capital awardee, and an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.
Betty Weibel
Betty Weibel is the author of The Ohio Literary Trail – A Guide which will be released in May by The History Press/Arcadia. She has been a successful journalist, public relations professional and agency owner. During her career, she has promoted her home state of Ohio, earning national acclaim from the Public Relations Society of America for work on the Ohio Bicentennial celebration and Ohio Travel and Tourism. She volunteers her time as a board member for both the Ohioana Library Association and Ohio History Connection, which inspired her to develop a digital Ohio Literary Trail. Her love of travel writing lead to her new book.
A lifelong equestrian who resides in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Weibel researched and published her first nonfiction book, The Cleveland Grand Prix: An American Show Jumping First, in 2014 with The History Press/Arcadia Publishing. In 2019, she published the inspirational nonfiction book Little Victories: A True Story of the Healing Power of Horses, a story based in the therapeutic horsemanship world. For more information, visit bettyweibel.com.
Laura Grace Weldon
Laura Grace Weldon served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books, most recently the Halcyon Poetry Prize winner, Portals. Her poetry and creative nonfiction appear in Diode, Verse Daily, Cultural Weekly, and others. She works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card each week.
Andrew Welsh-Huggins
Andrew Welsh-Huggins, of Columbus, is the Shamus, Derringer, and ITW-award-nominated author of The Mailman, featuring Mercury Carter, a former federal agent turned freelance courier. Welsh-Huggins is also the author of the standalone thriller, The End of the Road, the Andy Hayes Private Eye series, and editor of Columbus Noir. Andrew’s short stories have appeared in multiple magazines and anthologies, including The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021 and 2024. Learn more at: https://www.andrewwelshhuggins.com/
Jessica Weyer-Bentley
Jessica Weyer Bentley is an author/poet. Her first collection of poetry, Crimson Sunshine, was published in May 2020 by AlyBlue Media. Her second collection, Down Below Where the Canary Sings, was published in May of 2023 by Sage Owl Publishing in Massachusetts. She has contributed work to several publications for the Award-Winning Book Series, Grief Diaries. Jessica’s work has been published in countless anthologies both in print and online. She is the Ohio Poetry Association Student Contest Chair. Jessica grew up in the hills of Eastern Kentucky and currently resides in Northwest Ohio with her husband, Larry, and her two children, Laura and Joseph.
Nick White
Nick White is the author of two books of fiction: Sweet & Low, a collection of stories, and How to Survive a Summer, a novel. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Indiana Review, Catapult, The Literary Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor of English at The Ohio State University.