Category: Non-Fiction

Schwarz, Ted

Born: 1945 Ohio connection: Birth Cleveland Ted Schwarz was born Theodore R. Schwarz in Cleveland, Ohio.  He is the son of Theodore R. and Ruth Dorothy.  Ted Schwarz attended Case Western Reserve University, 1964-66, 1971; New York Institute of Photography, 1965; and The University of the South School of Theology, 1992-1995. Ted Schwarz is a …

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Jack Schaefer

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. …

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Julie Salamon

Born: 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, …

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Cynthia Rylant

Born: 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, …

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James Renner

Born: 1978 Ohio connection: Birth Cleveland James Renner, novelist, freelance journalist, and former newspaper editor, graduated from Kent State University in 2000 with a degree in English. He has also taught creative writing. Renner’s nonfiction books focus on unsolved crimes and strange stories from Ohio. While working as a staff writer for the alternative weekly, Cleveland Scene …

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Rick Porrello

Born: 1962 Ohio connection: Resident Cleveland Rick Porrello is a veteran Cleveland-area police officer who grew up in a family with Mafia roots. His grandfather and three of his uncles were mob leaders who were killed during Prohibition-era violence. His popular book, The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia (1995), grew out of research on his family. …

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