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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Richard Underwood
Richard H. Underwood, American legal scholar and legal nonfiction and true crime writer, is the Edward T. Breathitt Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. His most recent book is Gaslight Lawyers: Criminal Trials & Exploits in Gilded Age New York. He is also the author of CrimeSong: True Crime Stories from Southern Murder Ballads (2016), the recipient of two IPPY Book of the Year Awards and winner of a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award (Bronze, True Crime).
Underwood was born in Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up and attended college and law school. He graduated summa cum laude from The Ohio State University in 1969 and then entered the army. He served four years, with tours of duty in Germany and Vietnam, and later served as the security officer at the Presidio of San Francisco. Underwood left the army with the rank of captain, and he received a number of decorations, including the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Bronze Star. He then attended the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. After law school, Richard Underwood served as a law clerk for the Honorable David S. Porter, a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, in Cincinnati. He practiced several years with the law firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease in Columbus, Ohio, before taking a teaching position at the College of Law, University of Kentucky.
Professor Underwood has made many presentations, including a Musicology lecture, “Murdered Girls,” dealing with legal cases memorialized in Southern murder ballads, at the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music (2011), in addition to lectures at the Second World Conference on New Trends in Criminal Investigation and Evidence (1999) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the Worldwide Advocacy Conference (1998) at the Inns of Court School of Law, in London, England. In 2011, Underwood presented at the Bob Dylan and the Law Symposium, co-sponsored by the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, Touro Law Center, and the Fordham Urban Law Journal, in New York City.
He has taught a variety of courses, including Evidence, Scientific and Forensic Evidence, Litigation Skills (Trial Advocacy), Civil Procedure, Federal Courts, Insurance Law, Remedies, Law and Medicine, Bioethics, and Professional Responsibility (Legal Ethics). His legal publications include many law review articles, and he is the co-author of three legal practice books. Professor Richard Underwood has received special awards from the Kentucky Supreme Court for his work on the Kentucky Rules of Professional Conduct (1989) and for his service as the chairman of the Kentucky Bar Association Ethics and Unauthorized Practice Committees (1998).
Carmella Van Vleet
Carmella Van Vleet is a former teacher who has been a full-time author for over 20 years. She’s the author of over a dozen books, both fiction and non-fiction, for kids of all ages. Her debut middle grade novel, Eliza Bing Is (Not) A Big Fat Quitter, received the Christopher Award and was featured on multiple state award lists, including Choose to Read Ohio. And her recent middle grade, Nothing Is Little, was a 2023 Ohioana Book Award finalist. She also co-authored the picture book To the Stars! The First American Woman to Walk in Space (co-authored with astronaut Kathy Sullivan). Carmella lives in Columbus, Ohio. She can be found online at: https://carmellavanvleet.com/.
J. D. Vance
J. D. Vance is an author and venture capitalist known for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. The book is about the Appalachian values of his upbringing and their relation to the social problems of his hometown. Hillbilly Elegy is the winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award About Ohio/An Ohioan.
John A. Vanek
John Vanek is a physician, novelist, and poet with works published in numerous literary journals in four countries and showcased on public radio. He has garnered awards in both fiction and poetry, and has been invited to read his work at colleges, the Akron Art Museum, the Cleveland Clinic, and the George Bush Presidential Library. The Father Jake Austin Mystery Series features a Roman Catholic priest protagonist (a 21st century Father Brown). DEROS (book one), Miracles (book two), Absolution (book three), and his poetry book, Heart Murmurs: Poems, are available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com and fine bookstores.
Marie Vibbert
Hugo and Nebula nominated author Marie Vibbert’s short fiction has appeared over 90 times in top magazines like Nature, Analog, and Clarkesworld, and been translated into Czech, Chinese and Vietnamese. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was long listed by the British Science Fiction Award and her work has been called “everything science fiction should be” by the Oxford Culture Review. She also writes poetry, comics, and computer games. By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio. Learn more at Wikipedia or at: https://www.marievibbert.com/
Wendy Vogel
D. W. Vogel is a veterinarian, board game developer, cancer survivor, SCUBA diver, and current president of Cincinnati Fiction Writers. She is the author of the Horizon Alpha Series, the fantasy novel Super Dungeon: The Forgotten King, and the writing manual Five Minutes to Success: Master the Craft of Writing. Learn more at: https://wendyvogelbooks.com/
Dean Waggenspack
Dean Waggenspack is an author, executive resume writer, career/life coach, speaker, and blogger. He has self-published two non-fiction books: The Ledge and The Abyss: Near Death, Rescue, & The Search for Meaning (February 2024), a true story they experienced in St. Croix, the US Virgin Islands. In March 2023, Dean published Doable Change: Making Incremental, Achievable Difference in Your Career and Life. In 2019, he delivered a TedX Dayton Talk on “Rethinking Retirement”.
Tim Waggoner
Shirley Jackson Award finalist Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections of dark fiction. Waggoner wrote his first story at the age of five, when he created a comic book version of King Kong vs. Godzilla on a stenographer’s pad. It took him a few more years until he began selling professionally, though. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. He hopes to continue writing and teaching until he keels over dead, after which he wants to be stuffed and mounted, and then placed in front of his computer terminal. For more ifnformation about Waggoner, check out his website at timwaggoner.com.
Thomas E Wagner
Thomas E. Wagner is a university professor emeritusin the School of Planningat the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of books and articles on regional history, collective bargaining, and citizen participation.
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/