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. …
Read More Ruth AwadOHIO CONNECTION: Birth and Resident Cleveland and Shaker Heights Since childhood, Cleveland native and freelance writer Patricia Averbach (“a born teller of stories”) was driven to introspection, to observing, and to sharing her thoughts with others. Before learning to write, she verbalized her narratives to her grandmother who lovingly wrote them down for Averbach to …
Read More Patricia AverbachOHIO 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 …
Read More Charles Farrar Browne (aka “Artemus Ward”)BORN: 1971 OHIO CONNECTION: Resident Oberlin Born in London on April 5, 1971, to Muslim immigrants of Indian, Iranian, and Egyptian descent (political refugees from India), Kazim Ali became fascinated with poetry from his father’s eloquent readings from the Qur’an. After a residency in Jenpeg, Manitoba, between 1975 and 1979, Ali’s family relocated to Buffalo, New …
Read More Kazim AliOHIO CONNECTION: Birth/Resident North Olmsted (birth) After meeting former WJW-TV 8 anchor Tana Carli, North Olmsted native Denise Marie Dufala left Dyke College, changed her major to journalism, and enrolled in The Ohio State University. Beginning her sophomore year, Dufala began mailing audition tapes to Virgil Dominic, the general manager of Cleveland’s CBS affiliate WJW-TV8. …
Read More Denise Marie DufalaJournalist, war correspondent, and founder of the Cleveland Folk Arts Association, Theodore Andrica was the Cleveland Press Ethnic (Nationalities) Editor from 1927 to 1973. Born in the Romanian village of Radna on August 9, 1900, Andrica was nineteen years old when he emigrated to the United States in 1920. In the spring of 1927, Andrica …
Read More Theodore AndricaBorn: 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 …
Read More Thomas BoydBorn: 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 …
Read More Kate WilhelmBorn: 1958 Ohio connection: Resident Poland Nin Andrews grew up on a farm in Charlottesville, Virginia. She received her B.A. in 1980 from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and her MFA in 1995 from Vermont College. In 1982, she married Jim Andrews. Nin Andrews’ work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. She is …
Read More Nin AndrewsBorn: 1941 Ohio connection: Birth Cleveland Three weeks after her parents, Paul (a psychoanalyst) and Ellen Bergman, arrived in the United States after fleeing the Nazi regimes of Central Europe, Carol Ascher was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Ascher and her family lived in Topeka, Kansas, until she was twelve. The comforts of that Midwestern existence were …
Read More Carol Ascher