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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Sharon Short
Sharon Short is the author more than eleven published books. Her novel My One Square Inch of Alaska, released in 2013, chronicles the adventures of a pair of siblings escaping the strictures of the 1950s industrial Ohio town. The opening chapters of this novel earned Sharon a 2012 Ohio Arts Council individual artist’s grant and a 2011 Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District Literary Artist Fellowship.…
Read MoreSharon Short is the author more than eleven published books. Her novel My One Square Inch of Alaska, released in 2013, chronicles the adventures of a pair of siblings escaping the strictures of the 1950s industrial Ohio town. The opening chapters of this novel earned Sharon a 2012 Ohio Arts Council individual artist’s grant and a 2011 Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District Literary Artist Fellowship. Short is the Literary Life columnist for the Dayton Daily News, directs the renowned Antioch Writers’ Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and is an adjunct instructor of creative writing and composition at Antioch University Midwest. Additionally, Short’s book Sanity Check: A Collection of Columns, released in June 2012, includes 100 reader-favorites of her weekly humor and lifestyle column that ran in the Dayton Daily News from 2002-2012. She has published mystery series as well as short stories and essays. Short holds a B.A. in English from Wright State University and an M.A. in English from Bowling Green State University. She lives in Centerville, Ohio. Visit Sharon’s blog at http://sharonshort.blogspot.com/.
Heather Shumaker
Heather Shumaker is the author of books for children and adults.
Her newest book, The Griffins of Castle Cary, is charming and slightly spooky adventure for middle grade readers, ages 8-12 (Simon & Schuster, 2019). The story features three plucky siblings, a ginormous, drooly Newfoundland dog, and a bit of a ghost problem.
Heather is a nationally known speaker who frequently keynotes and teaches workshops. She speaks at early childhood conferences around the U.S. and Canada, as well as schools, libraries and writing conferences. She loves to share her joy of books and children with audiences everywhere.
She’s the author of three nonfiction books, including Saving Arcadia, a narrative nonfiction book about Great Lakes land conservation. Saving Arcadia (Wayne State, 2017) has won state and national awards including: Michigan Notable Book Award, Eric Hoffer Award finalist, and Next Generation Indie Book – Environment Winner. Her nonfiction parenting/ education books (It’s OK Not to Share, Tarcher Penguin, 2012 and It’s OK to Go Up the Slide Tarcher Penguin RandomHouse, 2016) have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Korean, Romanian, and Russian.
Heather was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. She holds a BA in sociology/ anthropology from Swarthmore College and an MS in land resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Today Heather lives in Traverse City, Michigan with her husband and two children.
Mandy Shunnarah
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is a Southern-born, Midwest-loving journalist, essayist, poet, and roller-skating enthusiast who calls Columbus, Ohio home. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Electric Literature, the Rumpus, and more. Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland is their first book. Read more on their website, mandyshunnarah.com
Cristina Sicard
Cristina Sicard, children’s author who brought you the lovable llama Harmony, carries on wanting to help children and adults alike through compelling storytelling. Resembling Cristina’s own battles with mental health, Sábana and Lula are characters she hopes to connect with individuals and elevate diversity and inclusion. To calm her worries, Cristina loves to take walks in the sunshine, laugh at herself and the messages her Dominican family sends in WhatsApp, pose with her gorgeous cat Cloudy, dance in front of mirrors, and work on projects with her out of this world Mami.
Carter Sickels
Carter Sickels is the author of The Prettiest Star (Hub City Press, 2020), winner of the Southern Book Prize, the Ohioana Book Award in Fiction, and the Weatherford Award, and the novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury, 2012). His debut novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury), a 2013 Oregon Book Award finalist and a Lambda Literary Award finalist, was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, Guernica, and Catapult. He lives in Cincinnati.
Eva Siedler
Eva Siedler and her sexy aircraft mechanic husband have built a crazy home in Central Ohio filled with almost as much neurodiversity as love. By day she wrangles two teenage boys with the supernatural ability to misplace anything, her POTS symptoms, and carpools. By night she writes funny, spicy love stories packed with strong, sassy heroines, big-hearted heroes, and tons of wacky small-town shenanigans.
Rox Siles
Rox Siles was born in Bolivia and moved at a young age to the United States. She grew up in Michigan where she got married and attended medical school. She currently works as a physician in Ohio.She developed a passion for writing children’s books after reading bedtime stories with her son. One night, they couldn’t agree on which book to read. It was at that moment they created, “Charlie the Turtle and the Muddy Birthday Cake.” Rox discovered her first illustrator, Monica Kimmell, after seeing her fantastic chalk art drawings on their hometown’s sidewalks. After a recent visit to a local Ohio farm, Rox was inspired to write her first bilingual book, “Paco the Alpaca (Paco la Alpaca) Goes to the Dentist (Va al Dentista.” She knew Martynas Marchiusm would be perfect to bring Paco to life.In her free time, Rox enjoys spending time with her family and their two dogs, Tika and Jazz. Her stories are often influenced by their family adventures and her Spanish heritage. Rox’s goal is to share positive messages with children through her bilingual books.
Marisa Silver
Marisa Silver is an author, screenwriter and film director. She is the winner of the 2017 Fiction Ohioana Book Award for Little Nothing.
Annette Dauphin Simon
Annette Dauphin Simon is the author and illustrator of several books for young readers, including Mocking Birdies and Robot Zombie Frankenstein! A former advertising creative director, she first found spine poetry—or spine poetry found her—as a bookseller in an independent bookshop. A proud parent of two lovely grown humans and one who lives yet in her heart, Annette’s at home in Southport, North Carolina. And any place with a book. Learn more at: https://annettesimon.net/
Dottie Sines
Dottie Sines manages the interlibrary loan department at The College of Wooster, contributes to multiple regional newspapers and magazines, and serves on the board of the Wayne County Historical Society. She has won several awards for her writing, including having twice in recent years been honored as one of ten finalists in the short story contest of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, which published her award-winning stories in the third and fifth editions of its literary journal, Hemingway Shorts. Where the Stars Cross is her first novel.