About Steph West

Steph West is an award-winning writer and festival-accepted director and producer. She was a former Gannett/USA Today Network and Fox Sports Ohio reporter. She covered the NHL and Columbus Blue Jackets for five seasons and appeared on Blue Jackets Live as a special guest correspondent several times throughout her tenure.

West has won multiple Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland Press Club, and AP awards, including seven Ohio SPJ awards in 2021 for the creative team she led as Vice President of Content at 614 Media Group. She’s also an Emmy-nominated (regional) film producer and director with two Silver Telly Award credits for her work leading the video portion of a veteran’s project with the Columbus College of Art + Design.

West won the 2025 gold medal in sports fiction from the North American Book Awards for her hockey novel The Third Period. In 2023 she won the WIFVNE Sports Screenplay Contest (first and second places) for Clean Break (football) and The Third Period (hockey), and the Firebird Book Award Competition for her debut memoir On Fire. You can view all her career awards here.

Her books include Clean Break, The Third Period, Newcross, Double Digits, California Love, The Pond House, and On Fire through her publishing company Red Fern Press. West will publish Author Karson Brown’s debut memoir 48 Days to Barbados Oct. 20, 2026 and is actively seeking new authors for her label. West also writes, directs and produces indie films through her production company, Eleven One Productions.

West is an alum of the Sundance Institute Collab and New York Film Academy producer courses and put herself through graduate school, earning an MFA in Creative Writing in May of 2020. She is currently a 2028 J.D. candidate at Ohio Northern University Law School and received her certification in Global Sports Management from NYU in January 2024.

She’s based in the Midwest and works with professionals regionally and in New York, L.A., and Canada.

You can purchase her work below.