|
Diana
Tittle
Writer
In the last
20 years, Diana Tittle has forged a career as writer, editor, journalist,
and publisher, proving that it is possible to be a literary light
without moving to New York.
With
a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University, Tittle
began as a newspaper reporter in the 1970s. Later she had a big
hand in the creation of the bright, sassy style for which Cleveland
Magazine was known at the time, racking up a number of best-selling
cover stories.
In 1980
she helped found Northern Ohio LIVE, serving as the arts
and entertainment magazine's first editor (she was creator of LIVE's
Awards of Achievement). Not content with these accomplishments,
she went on to found Octavia Press in 1987, setting out to prove
that books by Clevelanders about the Cleveland experience could
win a national audience. The Ultimate Benefit Book: How to Raise
$50,000-Plus for Your Favorite Organization and Superman
at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend are just two of the many
books Tittle has successfully guided into publication.
Most
recently, she was editor and project manager of Images from the
Heart, the beautiful book of Cleveland photographs that celebrated
our Bicentennial.
The publication
in 1996 of Tittle's Welcome to Heights High: The Crippling Politics
of Restructuring America's Public Schools, an intensive study
of an ambitious, if doomed, attempt to reform Cleveland Heights
High School, is a substantial midcareer achievement. Tittle took
months of interviews, statistics, and transcripts from meetings,
turning them into a judicious, balanced portrait of a community
and a school struggling to do the right thing. And her third nonfiction
work has the pacing and suspense of a novel: You can't put it down!
text by
Mary Grimm
Chair, 1998 Literature Jury
1993 Winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature
|