Judith Kuhn

For thirty years, Judy McCarty Kuhn taught high school English, history, and journalism. After retiring, she began a new career as a writer. The Other UC and Me: Editing the Sixties relates her experiences editing the University of Cincinnati News Record during the early days of the Vietnam Conflict. Then Magic Nation Tales, a series of six books for children (grades 4 and up) appeared. In recent years, Judy has penned two adult novels: The Dallas Documents and The Sixth Raven.

The Dallas Documets, set in 1963-64, follows six characters who witnessed the assassination of President Kennedy. The book presents the accounts of four of those witnesses who fill in the gaps of "the longest year in American history." Each relates feelings of vulnerability, deceit, and fear. "The theme of the novel relates to the 'Credibility Gap' that changed America. That gap began with the release of the Warren report and grew deeper during the Vietnam Conflict. For me, the somewhat unknown CIA scandal of 1967 made the gap a canyon," says Judy. Although title title relates to Dallas, the majority of the action is set in the Cincinnati Tristate. Visit the University of Cincinnati, the Carew Tower, the downtown YMCA, Cincinnati's iconic Italian restaurant, and the fictitious Arbor Hills Golf Club, Falls City College, and Aristotle University.

The Sixth Raven, Judy's first adult novel, combines history and reality with fantasy and science fiction. Dialogue, blogs, and photographs create the effect of digital postcards. The mystery engulfs a renegade Tower Raven, a young nanny, a team of archaeologists, and an ambitious reporter. The book is filled with historical oddities, jargon, and local color associated with both Wessex and southwest Ohio and Southeast Indiana. Judy lives just a few miles from the archaeological dig visited by Robert in the novel.

Falls College and Falls City (in both novels) are fictitious, but local readers will recognize its resemblance to the large college and small college town just north of Cincinnati.