Open Books Authors (click photo for full bio, current titles & more...)
David M. Hamlin
Open Books Welcomes New Authors
Isabella Grosso is a multi-discipline artist who has appeared in television, video, and film projects as a dancer, as an actress and also as a model. Isabella has performed with world-renowned artists such as Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and many more. She has also performed in feature and indie films, as well as HBO’s The Sopranos and Entourage, and the CBS hit CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Alan Rifkin's essays and short stories have been published widely, including by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Publishers; Gordon Lish's fiction journal The Quarterly from Vintage Books; and in numerous print and digital anthologies. He is the author of Signal Hill: Stories; Burdens by Water: An Unintended Memoir; and, with We Five's Jerry Burgan, Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution.
Rifkin now lectures fulltime in Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.
Steve Oskie’s plays have been produced in New York, Washington, and Philadelphia. He is the author of Mean Thoughts, a semi-finalist for the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel, and is the ghostwriter of Jerry Blavat’s autobiography, You Only Rock Once, which has been published in hardcover, paperback, and audio book editions. Steve’s short fiction has appeared in Textures, Pierien Spring, and other literary journals.
On a personal note, Oskie dropped out of college to “become a writer,” Whether his decision was prudent or not, there’s nothing he can do about it now.
Pamela Gwyn Kripke is a journalist and author whose stories have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Huffington Post, Slate, Salon, Medium, New York Magazine, Parenting, Elle, D Magazine, Creators Syndicate, Gannett Newspapers and McClatchy.
Her novel, At the Seams, received the Arch Street Press First Chapter Award and was excerpted in Embark and West Trade Review.
John Neeleman's second novel, Children of Saturn, is a revisionist historical novel of the French Revolution rooted in deep research, which dramatizes the past in order to speak to the present.
John's first novel, Logos, won both the 2016 Utah Book Award for fiction and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Religious Fiction.
Kirkus Reviews describes John's work as staggeringly impressive and rigorously researched that carries its scholarliness lightly and grips readers with personal drama.”
Now living in Las Vegas, Khristy Reibel grew up in rural Illinois and is still a Midwestern girl at heart. After graduating high school, she attended the University of Illinois where she received a B.S. in Marketing, which enabled her to hone her writing skills by creating advertising copy for a trade show company. In 2008, she enrolled at UNLV and later graduated with an M.Ed. In addition to writing, she now teaches high school English and German. She believes that teaching students to support their ideas in writing is the most important skill she can help them to learn.
Robert Klose teaches at the University of Maine. He is a regular contributor of essays to The Christian Science Monitor. His work has also appeared in Newsweek, The Boston Globe, and various literary magazines. His books include the novels, Long Live Grover Cleveland, which won a 2016 Ben Franklin Literary Award and a USA BookNews Award, and Life on Mars, which was a Finalist for a 2019 Best Book Award sponsored by American Book Fest and was also a Finalist in the International Book Awards and American Fiction Awards.
He is also a four-time winner of a Maine Press Association award for Opinion writing.
Tom Garlinghouse received an MA in science journalism from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2019 and has written for numerous scientific publications both in print and online.
Prior to his journalism career, he worked as an archaeologist, having received his Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of California, Davis.
A native Californian, Tom was born in Laguna Beach and grew up in the town of Capistrano Beach. He is a runner, avid surfer and hiker who enjoys the outdoors, exotic foods, classical music, and strong English teas.
Dr. Eileen Ryan has taught in a variety of educational environments from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northern Montana to the urban and suburban schools of Chicago. Dr. Ryan’s incentive to obtain a master’s degree in early childhood was initially inspired by the development of her five children. She continues to be inspired by the growth of her grandchildren.
Developing resource programs at three private high schools motivated Dr. Ryan to pursue a PhD in special education from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Throughout her career she also provided professional development in special education to a variety of schools.
Pamela Kripke
Steve Oskie
Robert Klose
Eileen Ryan
Pamela Kripke
Robert Klose
Steve Oskie
Jill Carstens
Alan Rifkin
John Neeleman
