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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Debbie Rigaud
Debbie Rigaud is a New York Times bestselling co-author of the Hope series (with Alyssa Milano) and The Sister Switch (with Sarah Mlynowski). Her notable young adult novels A Girl’s Guide to Love & Magic and Simone Breaks All the Rules are colored with sights and sounds of metro NYC, where she was born and raised. Debbie now lives with her husband and children in Columbus, Ohio, where she records her impressions of Midwestern life onto new pages. You can visit her at DebbieRigaud.com or on Instagram @FroAndABow.
Mark Rigney
Mark Rigney’s stage plays have been produced in twenty-three U.S. states (including off-Broadway) plus Australia, Austria, Canada, Hong Kong, Nepal, and New Zealand. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and his published plays are available from Playscripts, Inc., Next Stage Press, Heartland, and multiple editions of Smith & Kraus’s The Best Ten-Minute Plays. His novel Vinyl Wonderland arrived from Castle Bridge in June 2024, and in non-fiction, he is the author of Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical (Gallaudet). Nearly seventy of his short stories have found print, in venues ranging from literary (Witness, The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review) to fantasy and horror (Lightspeed, Cemetery Dance, Unlikely Story, Wyldblood, Black Static). When nobody’s looking, he adds to his collection of antique brewery items, gardens, and laments that his body won’t let him continue playing ultimate (Frisbee) tournaments. His website, which includes links to many of his (free!) online stories, is markrigney.net.
James Alan Riley
James Alan Riley is an American poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council. Riley received his Ph.D. from Ohio University. He is a Professor of English at the University of Pikeville in Pikeville, KY.
Sandra Rivers-Gill
A Native Ohioan, Sandra Rivers-Gill is a poet, teaching artist, and performer. Her poetry has garnered numerous awards, and has been featured in journals and anthologies. She is a member of the Ohio Poetry Association and has participated in events such as Lit Youngstown Festival, Poetry Out Loud, Spoken & Heard, and the Toledo Arts Commission. She is editor of Dopeless Hope Fiends, a limited-addition anthology of poems penned by women recovering from substance and alcohol abuse published by The Radio Room Press (2018). As We Cover Ourselves With Light is her debut chapbook published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions (2023).
Merry Robert
Robert W. Merry is the author of Where They Stand; A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk; Sands of Empire; and Taking on the World. A longtime Washington journalist, commentator, and publishing executive, he covered government and politics for The Wall Street Journal for a decade and spent twenty-two years as an executive at Congressional Quarterly Inc., including twelve years as CEO. This is his fifth book. Merry lives with his wife in Langley, WA, and Washington, DC.
Jim Roberts
Jim Roberts grew up in rural East Texas. After college, he lived and worked briefly in Houston before moving to Cincinnati, Ohio in the early 1980s to pursue a business career. Now a full-time writer, he and his wife, the artist Donna Berry Roberts, split their time between Ohio and Texas, depending on whim, changes in the weather, or the beckoning of distant haints. His fiction has appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Rappahannock Review, Snake Nation Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and The Arlington Literary Journal (ArLiJo). His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice named to the finalist list for the Screencraft Cinematic Short Story Award. Of Fathers & Gods is his first book.
Linda Robertson
Linda Robertson is an internationally published author. She won the OSU/Mansfield Florence B. Allen writing competition in 2006, earned a cum laude Associate of the Art’s Degree in English in 2008, and has published seven novels since 2009.
In addition to the Immanence series, she is the author of the Persephone Alcmedi series. She has also written, created, and produced a full musical score/CD for Jovienne.
She attends various writing conventions and book festivals, blogs, and gives workshops about the craft of writing. A mother of four boys, Linda is married and lives in Northeast Ohio.
Nicole Robinson
Nicole Robinson’s poems have appeared in Columbia Journal, The Fourth River, Great River Review, The Louisville Review, Spillway, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Individual Excellence Award for poetry from the Ohio Arts Council and the Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Currently serving as the narrative medicine coordinator at Akron Children’s Hospital, she resides in Ohio. Learn more: https://www.nicolerobinsonpoetry.com/
Margaret Rogerson
David Rohr
Born and raised in Ohio, David Rohr spent his working career in the state until the
age of 29. Even though he’s been a resident of other states since then—New York and
Tennessee—David remains a frequent Buckeye State visitor, as most of his immediate
family still resides there. He is an enthusiastic fan of Ohio State Buckeye football as
well as of many other Ohio college and professional sports teams.
His advertising and marketing communications career includes writing, creative
direction, and management for a number of advertising agencies and
communications firms. He has served clients ranging from those on the Fortune 500
to smaller companies and human services organizations. This career, as David likes to
point out, enabled him to write everything from rap songs about pastries to fulllength
books promoting multi-million dollar printing equipment. He is also an
entrepreneur, teacher, and father of three.
David is a proud graduate of Ottawa Hills High School (Toledo). In addition, he has a
B.S. in Journalism from Bowling Green State University, an M.S. in Management and
an M.A. in Liberal Studies, both from Nazareth College of Rochester plus a graduate
certificate from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.