Category: Fiction

Ruth Awad

BORN: 1987 OHIO CONNECTION: Resident Columbus In 1976, Ruth Awad’s father fled Abou Samra, Tripoli, Lebanon, to seek asylum in England during the Lebanese Civil War. After immigrating to the United States in the 1980s, he attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where he met Awad’s mother. Awad’s mother, a nurse, painted as a hobby. …

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Charles Farrar Browne (aka “Artemus Ward”)

OHIO CONNECTION: Resident Cleveland Born on April 26, 1834, humorist Charles Farrar Browne (aka “Artemus Ward”) grew up in Waterford Flat, Oxford County, Maine. His mother, Caroline Eliza Farrar Brown, was a freethinker descended from the first Puritan settlers of North America in Plymouth, Massachusetts. His father, Levi, was a liberal-minded Congregationalist whose grandfather, Jabez …

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Thomas Boyd

Born: July 3, 1898Died: January 1935 Ohio connection: Birth Defiance Writer, novelist, and journalist Thomas Alexander Boyd was born in Defiance, Ohio, the only child of Alice (nee Dunbar) Boyd and James Alexander Boyd. Due to his father’s death three months before he was born and his mother’s move to Chicago, Illinois, to pursue a nursing …

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Kate Wilhelm

Born: June 8, 1928Died: March 8, 2018 Ohio connection: Birth Toledo Kate Wilhelm was born Katie Gertrude Meredith, daughter of Jesse and Ann Meredith, in Toledo, Ohio, in 1928. After graduating from high school in Louisville, Kentucky, she worked as a model, telephone operator, sales clerk, switchboard operator, and underwriter for an insurance company. She …

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Sheila Schwartz

Born: May 4, 1952Died: November 8, 2008 Ohio connection: Resident Cleveland A Philadelphia native, Sheila Miriam Schwartz was born to Philip and Ruth (Motiloff) Schwartz.  She graduated from Temple University with a B.A. in English in 1974 and earned her M.A. in creative writing from the State University of New York, Binghamton in 1981.  Schwartz …

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Isaac Mayer Wise

Isaac Mayer Wise

Born: March 29, 1819Died: March 26, 1900 Ohio connection: Resident Cincinnati American Reform rabbi, author, and editor, Isaac Mayer Wise was born in Steingrub, Bohemia (now Lomnička, Czech Republic) in 1819, the son of Leo Weiss, a school teacher, and Regina Weiss. He was a prominent and influential rabbi in 19th-century America. A brilliant student, …

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Karen Harper

Born: April 6, 1945Died: April 13, 2020 Ohio connection: Birth Toledo Karen S. Harper was born in Toledo, the daughter of Robert A. (an engineer and draftsman) and Margaret (a teacher) Kurtz. Harper was raised in Toledo and graduated from DeVilbiss High School in 1963. After graduating from Ohio University in 1967, Harper was awarded …

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