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): 2022
Leanna Renee Hieber
Leanna Renee Hieber is an actress, playwright, ghost tour guide, and an award-winning, bestselling author of 16 novels and non-fiction books for Tor and Kensington Books such as the Strangely Beautiful, Eterna Files, and Spectral City series. She writes and narrates several speculative fiction series for Scribd.com. Her non-fiction book co-authored with Andrea Janes, A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, was a Bram Stoker Award finalist for “Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction”. Leanna’s Strangely Beautiful series became a 3-time Prism Award winner and Darker Still was a Daphne du Maurier award finalist. A licensed NYC tour guide working for Boroughs of the Dead, Leanna has been featured on TV shows like Mysteries at the Museum and Beyond the Unknown discussing Victorian Spiritualism. She gives lectures and theatrical presentations around the country at conventions and prestigious institutions such as New York University, Miami University, the Cambridge Public Library, Morbid Anatomy and more, focusing on paranormal themes and 19th century women’s history. http://www.leannareneehieber.com.
Will Hillenbrand
I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where my family owned a barbershop. As a kid, I often walked to the shop in the summer and delivered my Dad’s hot lunch. Then, I would take a break and listen to the conversations. Many customers told “big fish” stories laced with humor and exaggeration. I enjoyed drawing those stories at the kitchen table when I returned home. Later, I went to art school, and after taking a class in picture book art, I decided to try illustrating children’s literature. After over 76 books, I still feel lucky to do what I love. I live with my wife, Jane, and son, Ian, in Terrace Park, Ohio. Information about my books, selected readings, art process videos, and activity ideas can be viewed at http://www.willhillenbrand.com.
Kate Hoefler
Kate Hoefler was born and still lives and writes in the rolling hills of Ohio’s Appalachia. She is the author of numerous picture books and loves the book-love her work has received at Ohioana: two of her books, RABBIT AND THE MOTORBIKE and COURAGE HATS, were both Ohioana Book Award finalists and Floyd’s Pick Honor books. Another kids’ book career highlight was when Henry Winkler read RABBIT AND THE MOTORBIKE for Jennifer Garner’s #savewithstories (although only Rabbit was wearing a leather jacket for it). Her newest book is IN THE DARK, and she hopes you’ll find the lightest of lights in it. She loves pottery, being an introvert, and cheese. Follow her on instagram: (@katehoefler).
Kerrie Logan Hollihan
Author Kerrie Hollihan writes award-winning nonfiction for kids and teens. Her new book is BONES UNEARTHED!, third in the Creepy and True series for Abrams Books for Young Readers. Following GHOSTS UNVEILED! The first, MUMMIES EXPOSED!, garnered four four-star reviews.
Kerrie’s books have been honored as “notables” by the Children’s Book Council/National Council for the Social Studies and more. She’s especially thrilled that Mummies! is accessible for vision impaired readers through the Library of Congress. Her very first book, ISAAC NEWTON & PHYSICS FOR KIDS, has been printed in six languages.
Kerrie belongs to the highly regarded nonfiction author group iNK Think Tank and its interactive partner, Authors on Call – http://www.inkthinktank.org. Catch her three-minute talks about lots of things at iNK’s Nonfiction Minute, https://www.nonfictionminute.org.
Kerrie enjoys meeting young readers during school visits both in person and on the web. She offers kid-friendly activities with other nonfiction authors at Hands-on-Books, http://hands-on-books.blogspot.com/.
Kerrie also reaches out to inquisitive older adults–historical societies, book groups, and more–with programs speaking to their life experience. Get in touch on her contact page: https://kerriehollihan.com/contact/
Michelle Houts
Michelle Houts is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books for young readers, ranging from colorful, engaging picture books to adventurous middle-grade novels. Her newest book, HOPEFULLY THE SCARECROW (Flamingo Philomel, 2023) celebrates the power of hope and friendship when a scarecrow finds he has little control over his circumstances. Houts writes from a restored 1894 one-room schoolhouse. She is the creator of the 52 Letter Challenge. When she’s not writing, she is editing or encouraging young readers and writers through school visits and workshops.
Anna Lee Huber
Anna Lee Huber is the USA Today bestselling and Daphne award-winning author of the Lady Darby Mysteries, the Verity Kent Mysteries, and the Gothic Myths series, as well as the forthcoming historical fiction novel Sisters of Fortune: A Novel of the Titanic, and the anthology The Deadly Hours. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she majored in music and minored in psychology. She currently resides in Indiana with her family and is hard at work on her next novel. Visit her online at http://www.annaleehuber.com.
Ryan Huntley
Ryan Huntley is a recent Summa Cum Laude graduate of Upper Arlington High School in Ohio, where he lives with his family in a house his Maltese, Rudy, is kind enough to share with them. A member of the National Honor Society and the Cum Laude Society, an International Baccalaureate Diploma candidate, and a National Merit Finalist, Ryan is pursuing a higher education in the field of computer science with an emphasis on game design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is currently studying Japanese and hopes one day to live and work in Japan. When not involved in academic endeavors, Ryan can be found performing with various choral ensembles, traveling the world, and playing games until just a bit too late at night.
Allegra Hyde
Allegra Hyde is the author of the novel Eleutheria and the story collections The Last Catastrophe and Of This New World, which won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions, The Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. She lives in Ohio and teaches at Oberlin College.
Manuel Iris
Manuel Iris (Mexico, 1983). Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Cincinnati, Ohio (2018-2020). He received the “Merida” National award of poetry (Mexico, 2009) for his book Notebook of dreams, and the Rodulfo Figueroa Regional award of poetry for his book The disguises of fire (Mexico, 2014). In 2016two different anthologies of his poetic work were published: The naked light, in Venezuela; and Before the mystery, in El Salvador. His first bilingual anthology of poems, Traducir el silencio/Translating silence was published in New York in 2018. This book won two different awards in the International Latino Book Awards in Los Angeles, California, in that same year. In 2021, he became a member of the prestigious System of Art Creators of Mexico (Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte). His latest book “the parting present/Lo que se ira” received the Reader’s choice award from the Ohioana Library Association, and was also recognized at the 2022 International Latino Book Awards. Learn more at: https://manueliris.com/
Mark Sebastian Jordan
Mark Sebastian Jordan writes the weekly History Knox column for KnoxPages.com, music reviews for Seen and Heard International, and program notes and music appreciation talks for the Mansfield Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Mid Ohio Civic Opera. Jordan was included in the award-winning I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Poets (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2022). He has appeared on numerous television shows, including Mysteries at the Museum, and was a background actor in the classic film The Shawshank Redemption.