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): Poetry
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/
Janet Irvin
J. E. (Janet) Irvin is a career educator and the award-winning author of A PRINCIPLE OF LIGHT, THE DARK END OF THE RAINBOW, THE RULES OF THE GAME, and THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF ROSE STONE . Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in a variety of print and online journals, including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The Oyez Review, FLIGHTS, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Irvin holds degrees from Ohio University, the University of Dayton, and the University of Cincinnati. An avid hiker and canoeist, Irvin resides with her husband in southwestern Ohio on the edge of a nature park.
Marcus Jackson
Angela Johnson
An Ohioana Award-winning writer of novels and poems for children, Angela Johnson is also a three-time winner of the American Library Association’s Coretta Scott King Award, presented annually for “outstanding inspirational and educational works that promote understanding and appreciation of the cultures of all peoples.” Johnson was born in Alabama and grew up in Windham, Ohio. Now a resident of Kent, Ohio, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2003. Visit her website: http://www.ajohnsonauthor.com/.
Mabel C. Jones
Mabel C Jones is a Christian author who has been writing poetry and plays for her church and to encourage her friends and individuals for many years. I have appeared at various local churches reading my poetry as a narrator for both praise dance and choir concerts for many years. A couple years ago I decided to take many friends’ advice and put my poetry into a collection. I am presently working on putting together a volume two, also. I enjoy writing and encouraging others with my gift of poetry. And the delight in their eyes when they read it lets me know I have been a blessing to them…well, that is my thankful moment!
Saeed Jones
Saeed Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and GQ, and he has been featured on public radio programs including NPR’s Fresh Air, Pop Culture Happy Hour, It’s Been A Minute with Sam Sanders, and All Things Considered. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and tweets @TheFerocity. Learn more at: https://www.readsaeedjones.com/
Mark Sebastian Jordan
Based in the central highlands of Ohio, Mark Sebastian Jordan is published internationally as a music critic, is a specialist in the history of murder and mayhem in rural Ohio, and is known far and wide as a poet, storyteller, and humorist. His books include The Ceely Rose Murders at Malabar Farm (2021), The Witch of Mansfield (2023), Slammer: Private Dick (2017), Murder Ballads: American Crime Poems (2014), and The Book of Jobs (2010). He has contributed to such notable anthologies as I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Poets (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), Eclipsing the Dark (Ohio Poetry Association), Gas Station Famous (OAC Books/Spartan Press), and Buzzkill Apocalypse (Night Ballet Press).
Cindy Juyoung Ok
Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward, which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. She is a former high school science teacher and current Kenyon Review fellow teaching poetry at Kenyon College. A MacDowell fellow, Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Award finalist, and Phyllis Smart-Young Poetry Prize winner, she also edits and translates poetry.
Yalie Saweda Kamara
Yalie Saweda Kamara, Ph.D. is a Sierra Leonean American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California. She is the 2022-2025 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate and a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Kamara is the author of the poetry collection Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024), which was noted in The New York Times, The Rumpus, and Poets & Writers. Kamara earned a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati. She is an assistant professor of English at Xavier University. For more, please visit: http://www.yaylala.com
Joey S. Kim
I am an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo. Prior to arriving in Toledo, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University’s Kilachand Honors College and held teaching positions at Ohio State and UT-Austin. I research and teach global Anglophone literature with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century poetics and aesthetics. My first book project, Romanticism and the Poetics of Orientation, identifies a new mode of cultural production, what I deem a “poetics of orientation,” in nineteenth-century Romantic literature. This “poetics of orientation” roots the self-formation of the poetic subject in forms of cultural difference. In addition to nineteenth-century topics, I also work on global Asian culture and multiethnic U.S. literature. My next book project, The Yellow Nineteenth Century, traces Asian North American culture through print culture and newspapers in the postbellum period. My research has been supported by the NEH, the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, and others. I have published work in Essays in Romanticism, LA Review of Books, American Periodicals, Pleiades: Literature in Context, The Keats-Shelley Review, The Keats-Shelley Journal, Shondaland, The Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies, and elsewhere. A poet as well as a literary critic, my award-winning debut book of poems, Body Facts, was released by Diode Editions on June 15, 2021.
Visit her website at: https://www.joeyskim.com/