Born: 1957 Ohio connection: Birth Ashtabula Connie Schultz was raised in Ashtabula by working-class parents and received her bachelors degree in journalism from Kent State University in 1979. In addition to her biweekly column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer/Creators Syndicate, she has written two memoirs: Life Happens: And Other Unavoidable Truths and … And His Lovely Wife: A …
Read More Connie SchultzBorn: 1944 Ohio Connection: Birth Cincinnati Stanley Albert Schmidt was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Schmidt received his B.S. from the University of Cincinnati in 1966 and both an M.A. and Ph.D., from Case Western Reserve University in 1968 and 1969, respectively. From 1969 to 1978 he was the assistant professor of physics at Heidelberg College in …
Read More Schmidt, StanleyBorn: February 27, 1888Died: October 30, 1965 Ohio connection: Birth Xenia Arthur Meier Schlesinger was born in Xenia, Ohio, on February 27, 1888, the son of a first-generation immigrant. Schlesinger graduated in 1910 from Ohio State University in Columbus. During his stay at Ohio State, he married Elizabeth Bancroft; and their son, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., became …
Read More Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.Born: November 19, 1907Died: January 24, 1991 Ohio connection: Birth Cleveland Jack Warner Schaefer was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1907. Growing up in a house of voracious readers, Schaefer read everything from the exotic “Tarzan” stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs to the thrilling western fiction of Zane Grey. In 1910, Schaefer’s family moved to Lakewood, Ohio. …
Read More Jack SchaeferBradford Born: 1969 Ohio connection: Resident John Michael Scalzi II was born in Fairfield, California. He graduated high school (Webb School of California) in 1987 and earned an A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1991. During his 1989–1990 school year, Scalzi was the editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon. After college, Scalzi took a job as the film critic for …
Read More Scalzi, JohnBorn: November 25, 1895Died: February 21, 1986 Ohio connection: Birth Cincinnati Born on November 25, 1895, Cincinnati-native Helen Hooven Santmyer was the daughter of Joseph Wright and Bertha (Hooven) Santmyer. As a youth she loved to write, penning her stories in a makeshift office that her mother prepared. After recovering from an attack of typhoid fever, she …
Read More Helen Hooven SantmyerBorn: 1962 Ohio connection: Birth Mentor Michael G. Salinger was born in 1962, near Cleveland. A poet, performer, and educator, he is one of the earliest participants in the National Poetry Slam, former board member of Poetry Slam Inc., and current director of the organization’s summer writing and performance conference. Salinger is an eight time captain …
Read More Salinger, MichaelBorn: 1953 Ohio connection: Birth Seaman Julie Salamon was born in Seaman, Ohio, daughter of Alexander (a physician) and Lilly (a businesswoman; maiden name, Rapaport). Her father had survived Dachau death camp though his first wife and baby girl were lost to the gas chambers. After the war, he returned to Prague where he met Lilly, …
Read More Julie SalamonBorn: 1954 Ohio connection: Resident Rootstown It took Cynthia Rylant only one hour to write her first book, When I Was Young in the Mountains (1982), a collection of vignettes describing the years she spent with her grandparents in Appalachia. Born in Hopewell, Virginia, in 1954, Rylant spent her first four years in Illinois. When she was four, …
Read More Cynthia RylantBorn: 1950 Ohio connection: Resident South Euclid Mary Doria Russell was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, to military parents. A religious transformation was one of the defining experiences of her life. Raised a Catholic, she converted to Judaism in middle age with decades of atheism in between. Religious aspects made their way into Russell’s first …
Read More Mary Doria Russell