Category: Northeast

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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Dav Pilkey

Born: 1966 Ohio connection: Birth Cleveland Dav Pilkey, son of David M. and Barbara (Pembridge) Pilkey, was born in 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was considered to be a “class clown” during his years at parochial schools in Elyria, Ohio. He also struggled with attention deficit disorder, and had numerous difficulties with teachers. It wasn`t until …

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Susan Orlean

Born: 1955 Ohio connection: Birth Cleveland Susan Orlean is the daughter of Arthur and Edith Gross Orlean. In 1976, she obtained her B.A. from the University of Michigan. From 1983-1986, she was a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix. After a year spent with The Boston Globe as a columnist, she has been, since 1987, an editor for Rolling Stone …

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Mary Oliver

Born: September 10, 1935Died: January 17, 2019 Ohio connection: Birth Maple Heights Mary Oliver, daughter of Edward William and Helen M. (Vlasak) Oliver, was born in 1935 in the Maple Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. At the age of thirteen, Oliver had a great desire to be a writer. In 1950, when she was fifteen, she visited …

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Thylias Moss

Born: 1954 Ohio connection: Birth Cleveland Thylias Moss was born Thylias Rebecca Brasier, daughter of Calvin Theodore and Florida Missouri (Gaiter) Brasier, in 1954 in Cleveland, Ohio. She was an only child who describes her childhood as being a happy one with doting parents. Moss wrote her first short story at the age of six and her …

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Philip Brady

Born: 1955 Ohio connection: Resident Youngstown Poet, publisher, educator, and writer Phillip Brady was born and raised in New York City. Brady received a B.A. from Bucknell University, M.A.’s from the University of Delaware and San Francisco State University, and a Ph.D. in English from SUNY Binghamton; he has been an Ohio resident since 1990. Brady …

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George Bilgere

Born: 1951 Ohio connection: Resident Cleveland Poet and educator George Bilgere grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and Riverside, California. He received a B. A. from the University of California, Riverside, and an M.A. in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, before earning a Ph.D. in contemporary British and American poetry at the …

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