Randy McNutt, the author of twenty-two books, is a former writer for The Cincinnati Enquirer and Ohio Magazine. He has published two other books with the Kent State University Press, Lost Ohio: More Travels into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Lives (2006) and Finding Utopia: Another Journey into Lost Ohio (2012). A cultural historian, McNutt has also written extensively on American roots music.

His wife, Cheryl Bauer McNutt, is a former teacher and newspaper writer and the author of ten books, including Wisdom's Paradise: The Forgotten Shakers of Union Village, which she cowrote with Ohio senator Rob Portman. The McNutts live in Hamilton, Ohio.