Page Count

Devon Halliday, whose debut novel To Stay, To Stay, To Stay goes on sale October 27th, 2026, has worked as a literary agent, editor, essayist, critic, short story writer and educator. Halliday is also a Pushcart Prize winner among receiving other awards. Her work has appeared in online and print publications, including Plowshares and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and her popular self-titled Substa...

Our guest this episode is New York Times bestselling science fiction author and Hugo award winner John Scalzi. Scalzi's work includes the Old Man's War series, the Lock In universe, the Interdependency series, and stand-alone novels like Redshirts, The Kaiju Preservation Society, Starter Villain, and When the Moon Hits Your Eye. His nonfiction work has included The Rough Guide to the Universe and...

The Ohio Center for the Book presented Ohio authors Aubrey Hirsch and Virginia Konchan in conversation "On Genre, Gender, and More" at Literary Cleveland's Inkubator Writing Conference in September 2026. Held at Cleveland Public Library, Inkubator is the largest free writing conference in the country and continues to grow every year. Their conversation touched on adult topics and includes adult la...

Kortney Morrow is the Program Director of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, the nation's only juried literary prize dedicated to honoring authors that are writing about race and diversity. The Awards were created in Cleveland and sponsored by the Saturday Review from their founding in the 1930s to 1963. At that time, Ohio became home to the Awards with the Cleveland Foundation taking over administra...

In this episode, Page Count welcomes Suzanne Walker, Center for the Book Program Manager at the Library of Congress. The conversation with Ohio Center for the Book Coordinator, Don Boozer, highlights the National Book Festival, the signature event of the year for the affiliate Center for the Book network. Suzanne and Don talk about what goes into planning the National Book Festival, what attendees...

If you're listening to this episode near its release date, I want to encourage you to check out the National Book Festival coming this Saturday, August 22. We'll be gathering with the other affiliate Centers for the Book in Washington, DC. In addition to all our booths celebrating our states' and territories' literary heritage and Great Reads from Great Places selections, there will be over 80 fea...

For this episode Page Count welcomes a special guest host, Annisha Jeffries. Annisha is the Youth & Community Outreach Manager at Cleveland Public Library, the home of the Ohio Center for the Book. She has extensive expertise in children’s literature, including having served as chair of the Caldecott Committee and the Norman A. Sugarman Children’s Biography Award. She’s also the host of her ow...

This week, we are sharing an historic conversation among Ohio comic book royalty: Prolific, award-winning creators Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko. The conversation was moderated by Mike Sangiacomo, one of the Founders of the Siegel and Shuster Society. Recorded live on July 11, 2026, at the Cleveland Public Library as part of the weekend-long Icons Fest held in conjunction with the Icons i...

This week, we're highlighting children's authors from past Page Count episodes in recognition of that energizing and exhausting tradition of the Summer Reading Club. In our introduction, we look at Ohio's role in the beginnings of the "Summer Reading Club" in the 1890s and then talk about some of our past episodes on children's book authors and illustrators. Our featured "Backlist Pick" episode is...

In the original episode, Brian Schoen, Ph. D., and Timothy G. Anderson, Ph. D., the editors of Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond, discussed Ohio’s history, the inspiration for, and the genesis of Settling Ohio. Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond was Ohio Center for the Book’s 2024 Great Reads from Great Places selection for adult readers and represented the state at the National Book Fe...

Dr. Valentino Zullo explores the Cleveland-created superhero’s origin story in honor of Superman’s 85th birthday. Dr. Zullo and Laura discuss some of the first-ever Superman comics; Superman’s early focus on fighting social inequities vs. super villains; how creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster came to dream up the famous superhero; and more.   Since the original episode aired, Superman has come...

This summer, Page Count is settling down with a good beach read to take a hiatus—which means we’ll be bringing you some select episodes from our extensive backlist, complete with new introductions. First up is one of the first episodes ever produced by Page Count: The Ohio Literary Trail. Follow along as David Weaver, the former executive director of the Ohioana Library Association , and Betty Wei...

Page Count is pleased to share an episode of PASSAGES: On Morrison , a new podcast that follows Namwali Serpell on her book tour for ON MORRISON . This episode takes us to Columbus, Ohio, where Serpell was joined by Hanif Abdurraqib in the Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison kickoff event to read and discuss the end of SONG OF SOLOMON. Serpell and Abdurraqib discuss this final passage, the challenges of...

It’s a podcast takeover! Five young writers—Moriah, Malikye, Victoria, Jordan, and Wilma—share poems and a story excerpt, all of which are about to be published in Lake Erie Ink’s 10th annual Teen Book Project . This year’s anthology is titled Lights, Camera, Action, a theme that speaks, in part, to the phenomenon of feeling seen in an online world.   To view the art and read all the writing in th...

Andre Norton is one of the pivotal figures in the history of science fiction and fantasy and remains eminently relevant for modern readers. She was a prolific writer, authoring more than 300 titles spanning a career from the 1930s to the 2000s. She was one of the earliest writers to create stories of a post-nuclear apocalyptic dystopia and works of post-humanism yet kept a thread of hope and optim...

In this supernatural spectacular, Laura is joined by her spouse, Peter, for an overnight ghost-hunting expedition at the Thurber House in Columbus. Do they experience any paranormal phenomena? Do they resurrect hazy, decades-old memories of the film Ghost? Do they demonstrate a stunning lack of knowledge about everything from religious philosophy on ghosts to Star Wars, the mechanics of night visi...

Laura sits down with Tiffany Graham Charkosky, Director of Arts and Culture at Cleveland Public Library, to recap the 2026 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Baltimore in early March. From exploring the bookfair, meeting up with writing friends, attending panels and offsite readings, pushing their social batteries to the limit, and more, they get into it all. Come fo...

Grab your ginger ale, your hockey pucks, and your intense sense of longing, because we’re heading to the cottage. Cleveland author Sonia Feldman joins us to discuss the Heated Rivalry phenomenon—the hit show and its cultural impact, the art of adapting romance novels, and what it means to be girls who love boys who love boys. We also turn to another form of queer love found in Feldman’s forthcomin...

Welcome to the dark world of horror author Tracy Cross! In this episode, Cross discusses her Conjure series trilogy, which follows a young girl developing into a powerful Hoodoo practitioner in Louisiana in the late 1800s. In the process, Cross sheds light on the practice of Hoodoo, why she was drawn to writing about this time period and setting, her research process, how Black writers are reclaim...

It’s the year of Toni Morrison! Our friends at Literary Cleveland, in partnership with Ohio Humanities, are leading a yearlong, statewide celebration of the life, literature, and legacy of Toni Morrison, a Lorain, Ohio, native and the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. With the event kickoff just around the corner on February 18, Page Count is celebrating by rerunni...

Daniel Tam-Claiborne recently appeared at Mac’s Backs Books in Cleveland to discuss his debut novel, Transplants, which surrounds a Chinese college student and a Chinese American teacher who find themselves uprooted in new lives and cultures. Tam-Claiborne sheds light on his inspiration and process, his philosophy on writing outside one’s own experience, the craft of a multi-POV novel, incorporati...

Sportswriter Christine Brennan discusses her latest book, On Her Game : Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports, including how she came to conceive, research, write, and publish the book as an instant New York Times bestseller in only a year. In addition to dissecting Caitlin Clark’s career and impact on the WNBA, Brennan also discusses her Toledo upbringing, the art of sports journalis...

We’re leaving 2025 on a note of failure, mishaps, and shame. That’s right: we have bloopers! Listen in to discover that Laura is incapable of saying the word “archivist,” she asks hopelessly clunky questions, she is completely unfamiliar with the 1991 action film Backdraft, she can’t recall the podcast introduction she’s said literally over 100 times, and she even gets popcorn stuck in her throat...

It’s December, it gets dark in the afternoon, and it’s freezing here in Ohio…what better time to dive into the cheery topic of rejection? Better yet, how about a clip show of rejection goodies? LOL, you’re welcome! This mini episode features clips from seven guests who appeared on Page Count in 2025 and offered some rejection-related insights on everything from submission strategies to the importa...

You’ve just been handed a rectangular-shaped gift with the telltale heft and size of a book. Who knows what worlds might be contained in that one little object? This holiday season, you can give that same gift of possibility by shopping at an independent bookstore—and Nick and Celeste Polsinelli, the owners of Little Professor Book Center in Athens, Ohio, have plenty of ideas to get you started. I...