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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Jane Ann Turzillo
Jane Ann Turzillo is the author of ten books. She has been nominated twice for the Agatha for Wicked Women of Ohio and Unsolved Murders & Disappearances in Northeast Ohio. She is also a National Federation of Press Women award-winner for Wicked Cleveland, Ohio Train Disasters, and others. A full-time author and speaker, she concentrates on true crime and history. Her current book is Northern Ohio Cold Cases. As one of the original owners of a large weekly newspaper, she covered police, fire and hard news. Visit her website at http://www.janeannturzillo.com.
Beverly Twomey
Beverly Twomey was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. For over ten years, she has worked as a used bookseller which has greatly expanded her personal Tolkien collection. When she is not lost in the stacks, she can be found drinking vast amounts of tea, snuggling with her two cats, reading fantasy novels, writing in the wee hours of the morning and plotting ways to play more Dungeons & Dragons.
Tara Tyler
Tara Tyler has had a hand in everything from waitressing to rocket engineering. After moving all over the US, she now writes and teaches math in Ohio with her husband and one boy left in the nest. She has two novel series, Pop Travel (sci-fi detective thrillers) and Beast World (fantasy adventures), plus her UnPrincess novella series where the damsels save themselves. She’s a commended blogger, contributed to several anthologies, and to fit all these projects in, she economizes her time, aka the Lazy Housewife—someday she might write a book on that… Make every day an adventure!
Dana Ullom-Vucelich
Dana Ullom-Vucelich’s study of child development and gerontology nourished a deep appreciation for the remarkability of both little people and big people. She has benefited from a career highlighting vibrancy in aging. Her #1 qualifier to write this book was growing up close to her four grandparents, two greats and watching her parents morph into grandparents. These GRANDS offered acceptance, encouragement, compassion, and support. Her very deepest inspiration for her first book has been the journey of her mom’s walk with Alzheimer’s and her fiercest commitment to honor intergenerational relationships and inspire the memory makers and the memory keepers.
Suzy Ultman
Suzy Ultman has been creating toys and books for family and friends since childhood. A born storyteller, Suzy is an illustrator, product designer, toy creator, and bookmaker of sophisticated and simple objects that inspire and delight. Suzy’s signature products center connection, community, and finding your place within our global family. When she isn’t in her studio folding paper, designing textiles, or creating toys, she can be found strolling through antique shops, finding treasures at flea markets, and communing with nature. She’s nested with her husband and three sons in their cozy home in Ohio.
Thrity Umrigar
Thrity Umrigar is the bestselling author of nine previous novels, including Honor, which was a Reese’s Book Club Pick, as well as three picture books and a memoir. Her books have been published in over fifteen countries and in several languages. A former journalist, she has contributed to The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The New York Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and other newspapers. She is a recipient of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, and winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Seth Rosenberg prize and a Lambda Literary award. She is currently a Distinguished University Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. https://umrigar.com/
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/.
Jeannie Vanasco
Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl (2019) and The Glass Eye (2017). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Believer, Lit Hub, The New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she now lives in Baltimore and is an assistant professor of English at Towson University.
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.