Born: 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 RussellBorn: 1954 Ohio connection: Birth Columbus Michael Rosen was born in Columbus, Ohio, the eldest son of Marvin and Nona Rosen. His childhood home was in a new development situated amid a former pasture. It was there he explored construction sites and fields, collected cocoons, milkweed pods and chrysalises, gathered buckeyes, fed roadside horses, and fished. Rosen attended Kent State …
Read More Michael J. RosenBorn: November 29, 1892 Died: September 1984 Ohio connection: Birth Frankfort Eugene Holloway Roseboom, son of Emerson Beard and Sarah Alice (Miller) Roseboom, was born in 1892 in Frankfort, Ohio. He received a B.A. in 1914, and an M.A. in 1916, both from Ohio State University. He taught high school classes in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, from 1916 …
Read More Roseboom, Eugene HollowayBorn: October 24, 1927Died: July 9, 2013 Ohio connection: Birth Portsmouth Barbara Robinson was born in the southern Ohio river town of Portsmouth. Robinson’s father died when she was three and her mother, a school teacher, encouraged her to read books. Robinson began writing at an early age. She graduated from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, with …
Read More Barbara RobinsonBorn: 1937 Ohio connection: Resident Cleveland Heights Born Lester Roubert in Chicago, Illinois, Les Roberts had his surname legally changed in 1968. Roberts is the son of Lester Nathaniel (a dentist) and Eleanor Sybil (Bauch) Roubert. He married Gail Medland in 1957 and they divorced in 1980 after having two children: Valerie Lynne and Darren Jon. Les …
Read More Les RobertsBorn: October 13, 1890Died: October 30, 1968Ohio connection: Resident Cleveland Conrad Michael Richter was born October 13, 1890, in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a series of tiny coal mining towns with his parents: John Absalom, a Lutheran minister, and Charlotte Esther (Henry) Richter. Richter’s formal schooling ended when he graduated from high school …
Read More Conrad Richter