Frank  McCourt

Frank McCourt spent 27 years teaching English and writing in New York City high schools before retiring. He then began to write his memoirs. His first book in the series, Angela’s Ashes, was published when he was 66 years of age and won him the Pulitzer Prize. The second and third books—‘Tis: A Memior and Teacher Man—have both been bestsellers and continued the story of his life. Mr. McCourt has also written a musical review entitled The Irish and How They Got That Way and a play entitled A Couple of Blaguards. He recently signed a contract to write two children’s books.

Books
Angela's Ashes
'Tis: A Memoir
Teacher Man

Web
www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mcc1bio-1
Academy of Achievement, A Museum of Living History

(1996)
Sandy  Asher

The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant in playwriting, Sandy Asher has published 14 plays and 16 books for young readers.

Her best-known play, A Woman Called Truth, received the American Alliance for Theater and Education’s 1994 Distinguished Play Award. The play was also named an "Outstanding Play for Young Audiences" by the International Association of Theatres for Children and Young People and was given the Joseph Campbell Memorial Fund Award by The Open Eye Theater in New York City. The play--a celebration of the life of Sojourner Truth--has been performed by more than 100 high-school, college, community, and professional theater groups nationwide and in Canada, including productions at the Smithsonian Institute and the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

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(1999)
Linda  Bloodworth-Thomason

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason is widely known as the creator/writer of the television shows, Designing Women and Evening Shade.

She worked as a reporter for The Los Angeles Daily Journal, then as a freelance writer. She was the first woman writer on M*A*S*H and wrote episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, One Day at a Time and Rhoda.

She is the first American writer in television history to write 35 consecutive episodes of a TV series. She is under contract with Warner Books and is writing her first novel, Liberating Paris.

As a writer, she has received numerous Emmy and Writers Guild nominations. She has received both the Genii Award and the Silver Satellite Award for outstanding achievement in the field of broadcast communications from American Women in Radio and Television. In 1990, Ladies Home Journal named her one of America’s Fifty Most Powerful Women. Newsweek named her one of the fourteen most influential women of the year.

Bloodworth-Thomason taught English literature at Jordan High School in Watts, California. To honor her late mother, she created the Claudia Foundation, which provides scholarships for qualified girls in Arkansas and Missouri who otherwise would not be able to attend college. She has donated over one million dollars to these scholarships, which have put 87 women in colleges and universities across the country. She also has served as a speaker for the Writers Guild Foundation’s Film and Television Writers Forum.

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(2003)
Wayne  Carson

There are ‘music makers’ and there are ‘makers of music’. Composer-songwriter Wayne Carson has proven himself to be one of that rare breed known as a ‘maker of music’. His songs have sold in excess of 75 million records and have been recorded by a list of artists that read like a Who’s Who of the recording industry. Mr. Carson has written such American classics as "The Letter" and "Always on My Mind". Equally at home with rock-n-roll, country or rhythm and blues, his music has successfully crossed all boundaries throughout the world.

Mr. Carson is probably represented in every popular music collection in the world having composed 20 number one records and 5 platinum albums. He has also won 2 Grammy Awards and has recently been inducted in to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

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(2004)
Deborah  Chester

Internationally published author of 34 novels, Deborah Chester has written historical romances, young adult, science fiction, and fantasy under her own name and two pseudonyms. A professor of professional writing for the University of Oklahoma’s College of Journalism and Mass Communication, she teaches novel and short story writing. In 2002, she won their Distinguished Teaching Award. In 1981, her young adult novel, The Sign of the Owl, was named to the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list. In 1983, The Sign of the Owl was a Mark Twain Award winner. In 1985, Chester was named Oklahoma Writer of the Year. In 1994, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of Fame. In 1998, her bestselling sf novel Alien Chronicles #1: The Golden One was named to VOYA’s Best Books for Young Adults list. It was the first volume of a trilogy commissioned by LucasFilm Publishing Ltd. She has also written a tie-in novel for Steven Spielberg’s Earth 2 television show. Her latest bestselling trilogy, known as The Sword, The Ring, and The Chalice has grown into a seven-book series.

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(2000)
Don  Coldsmith
"A would-be writer should prepare to make a living in some other vocation. Thus, he/she can work for sustenance and write for love. The results of both will be better." Don Coldsmith

This family doctor-turned-writer was born, reared and still lives on the Kansas plains that are central to the more than 30 Westerns and historical fiction he has produced in his career so far. His popular Spanish Bit Saga is a series of historical novels about the Indians of the Great Plains. He is a popular speaker and lecturer on the American Indian and the literature of the American West, and he teaches English at Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas. He and his wife operate a small ranching operation and have raised cattle and Appaloosa horses.

Books
Tallgrass
South Wind
Medicine Hat
The Changing Wind
Runestone
Pale Star
Song of the Rock
The Traveler
The Elk-Dog Heritage

Journalism
Coldsmith’s widely syndicated column, "Horsin’ Around"

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(2000)
Lori  Copeland
"I have never loved nor feared a gift so thoroughly." Lori Copeland

Copeland has written 50 novels with a consistent, uplifting voice that has made her a favorite in romantic fiction. She is currently working in the Christian fiction market. She credits her success to her sense for humor - being drawn to the humorous side of life, surrounding herself with people who have a gifted sense of humor, and using her own instincts about how to turn those elements into a good story. "The lighter story often impacts a reader more than drama - that comedic situation that most often sticks in our minds," she says. Copeland has won numerous writing awards, and she is a popular speaker to Ozarks area writers organizations.

Books
Hope
Faith
Fool Me Once
Tall Cotton
Rainbow’s End
Seasons of Love
Melancholy Baby
Sweet Hannah Rose
Avenging Angel
With This Ring
The Courtship of Cade Kolby
The Bride of Barren Flats

Web
www.tyndale.com/authors/bio.asp?code=145
Feature bio from the Tyndale Books web site
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(1997)
Janet  Dailey

Janet Dailey of Branson, Missouri, wrote her first novel, No Quarter Asked, in 1974 after her husband, Bill, urged her to back up her claim that she could write a better romance novel that the ones she read. This first effort, completed in six months, was accepted without revision by Harlequin. That book sold more than one million copies and led the way for the success of more than 50 that followed.

To date, Dailey, the best-selling female author in North America and the third best-selling author in the world, has published 90 books and 6 short stories; 21 of her most recent titles have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list. More than 300 million copies of her romance novels have been sold in 19 languages and in 98 countries.

From Silver Wings, Santiago Blue
When it was her turn to sit in the pilot’s seat of the mammoth bomber, excitement thudded through her veins. The rubber earphones curved over her head like earmuffs while she went through the checklist, finally coming to that moment of power when her fingers rested on the button to start the number-one engine. She pressed it and watched the first shudder of the big prop. Four massive 1,325-horsepower engines powered the bomber. Soon, the roar of all four was vibrating the plane.
From the right seat, her instructor taxied the B-17 to the end of the runway, maneuvering the big plane with the outer engines . . . . The plane lumbered like a huge elephant and it seemed to stand about as much chance of getting off the ground.

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(1999)
Billie  Davis

Billie Davis is the author of numerous books, articles, poems.

Her famous autobiographical story, I Was a Hobo Kid, relates her experiences as a migrant child. It originally appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and has been reprinted in Readers Digest and many anthologies. It was made into a vieo by the National Education Association, entitled, A Desk for Billie.

She recently authored a chapter in the book, A Christian World View, and she contributed to the book The Ripe Harvest. She has been published in such periodicals as Country Folk and Christian Education Counselor.

Davis was recently included in a biographical book entitled, People of Purpose, People Who Make a Difference. She is a winner of the Awakening the Giant Writing Award and has been awarded the Meritorious Service to Education from the Southwest Missouri State Education Association, the Outstanding Achievement award from Florida Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the Migrant Educator award.

Her credits include (partial list): I Was a Hobo Kid; Teaching to Meet Crisis Needs; The Dynamic Classroom; People, Tasks and Goals; and Renewing Hope.

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(2002)
Debra  Dier

Born in Niagara Falls, New York, Debra Dier now makes her home in Hazelwood, Missouri. She began writing full-time in 1990 and her first historical romance novel was published in 1993.

Her novels include: My Scottish Summer, Beyond Forever, Christmas Angels, Deceptions and Dreams, Shadow of the Storm, and Surrender the Dream. Debra taught herself to write by reading books on writing, by reading books she liked, and most of all, by writing. She is now the author or co-author of 16 published books and she has been nominated for a Career Achievement Award by Romantic Times.

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(2001)
Charlie  Farmer
"I cannot imagine life without the drama of successfully bonding words together." -Charlie Farmer

Charlie Farmer’s many first-hand outdoor adventure books, Newspaper columns and magazines have stirred a sense of adventure in the minds of his readers since he began writing full time in 1969.

His own love of the outdoors has led to 12 books about fishing, hunting, camping, canoeing, backpacking, outdoor cooking, history and wilderness. His outdoor and conservation columns appear three days a week in the Springfield, Missouri, News-Leader, where he has been a free-lance columnist since 1983.

He also has hosted a popular weekly outdoor radio program on Springfield’s KTXR, called "The Outside Story" since 1990. A versatile outdoors communicator with more than 1,000 magazine credits, he is also a video and television script writer specializing in outdoor adventure and conservation topics.

Farmer’s taste for writing and the outdoors began during his childhood and continued after he settled in Ozark, Missouri, 25 years ago: "As a boy in grade school, I made my own journals and wrote in them almost every day about school, friends, sports and the outdoors. Writing it down made it important for me."

He received a bachelor of arts degree in 1966 from Kansas State University and continued writing after joining the U.S. Army. "Almost every night after maneuvers, I’m writing in a journal with a pen-size light under the blanket. In the worst way I needed to document life as a soldier."

Following his army service, Farmer took his first writing job with the Wyoming Game & Fish Department, where his pen and typewriter stayed busy.

He later married, had children and settled in the Ozarks. "Now," he says, "the journal is in my backpack as I hike Piney Creek. It’s everywhere I go."

Tips for Fishermen, 1982

Charlie Farmer Ozark Adventures, 1992

Low Impact Camping & Backpacking, 1994

Devil’s Pool, 1995

Unspoiled Beauty - A Personal Guide to Missouri Wilderness, 1999

His articles also have appeared in National Geographic, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, Boating World, and as a regular column in the Springfield News-Leader.

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(2004)
Dale  Freeman

A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Freeman started his newspaper career in Springfield, Missouri in 1944 and was a reporter, assistant city editor, Sunday editor, executive city editor, and editor-in-chief, and Executive editor of the Springfield (Mo.) Newspapers. After retiring, Freeman served as Editor-in-residence and lecturer in journalism at Missouri State University for more than a decade. During his long career, he served as a chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors Education for Journalism Committee and a member of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association journalism education, ethics committees. He was a former board member, Mid-America Press Institute and the Missourian Publishing Company. He is a former chairman of the Missouri-Kansas Editors-Publishers Association and the Missouri AP Wire Editors. He is currently a board member of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Association. Freeman was a longtime columnist as "The Ozarker" in the Springfield Newspapers. He is a contributing editor to OzarkWatch magazine and is the author of four books.

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(2001)
Robert Lee Frost

Robert Lee Frost was one of America’s leading 20th century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874, and died in Boston, January 29, 1963.

An essentially pastoral poet, he is often associated with rural New England. His verse forms are traditional, and he was a pioneer in the interplay of rhythm and meter and in the poetic use of the vocabulary and inflections of everyday speech.

Frost attended Dartmouth College and later Harvard College, but left both schools without degrees. Instead, he amassed life experiences as a school teacher, mill worker and newspaper reporter. In the 10 years after he left Harvard, he wrote yet rarely published poems, operated a farm in New Hampshire and taught at Derry’s Pikerton Academy.

In 1912 at the age of 38, he sold the farm and took his family to England, where he could devote himself entirely to writing. His efforts were almost immediately successful, and he established a transatlantic reputation.

The Frosts returned to the United States in 1915, two days after the U.S. publication of North of Boston (the first of his books to be published in America). Sales of that book and of A Boy’s Will enabled Frost to buy a farm in Franconia, N.H.; to place new poems in literary periodicals and publish a third book, Mountain Interval (1916); and to embark on a long career of writing, teaching and lecturing.

Frost’s poetic and political conservatism caused him to lose favor with some literary critics, but his reputation as a major poet is secure.

"Butterfly: An Elegy" appears in 1894 in The Independent, a New York literary journal.

A Boy’s Will is accepted by a London publisher and brought out in 1913.

North of Boston, a collection, 1914, 1915

Mountain Interval, 1916

New Hampshire, 1923

Collected Poems, 1930

A Further Range, 1936

A Witness Tree, 1942

"The Death of the Hired Man" (from North of Boston) combines lyric & dramatic poetry in blank verse.

"After Apple-Picking" (North of Boston) is a free-verse dream poem with philosophical undertones.

"Mending Wall" (North of Boston) demonstrates Frost’s simultaneous command of lyrical verse, dramatic conversation and ironic commentary.

"The Road Not Taken" and "Birches" (from Mountain Interval) and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (from New Hampshire) show Frost’s ability to join the pastoral and philosophical modes in lyrics of unforgettable beauty.

In 1924 Frost received a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for New Hampshire. He was lauded again for Collected Poems, A further Range and A Witness Tree. Over the years he received an unprecedented number and range of literary, academic and public honors.

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(2000)
Theodor Seuss Geisel
"A person's a person no matter how small. Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained and delighted." Dr. Seuss

1904 - 1991

Children’s Author, Illustrator

The genius behind the Grinch, the Cat in the Hat and the irrepressible Sam I Am was a magazine cartoonist and humor writer of the 1920’s who found his greatest and most satisfying success writing for younger audiences in the late 1930’s until his death in 1991. Theodor Geisel’s zany stories with gentle messages for life introduced generations to the joy or reading. Geisel wrote and illustrated 47 books that have sold more than 100 million copies in 18 languages. Dr. Seuss remains the world’s best-selling author of children’s books.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Green Eggs and Ham
The Cat in the Hat
If I Ran the Zoo
If I Ran the Circus
Dr. Seuss’s ABC Book
Horton Hears a Who
Lorax
There’s a Wocket in My Pocket
Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

Web
www.randomhouse.com/seussville/morefun/ted.html
The official Random House site

www.afn.org/~afn15301/drseuss.html
A fan’s page of fun notes, images and links
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(1997)
James  Giglio

Springfield, Missouri, biographer and historian James Giglio, the author of four books and numerous articles, is concerned that "I convey in my writing the warmth of life being lived along with a sense of drama and time and place. My objective is to make my work readable to the general public."

Dr. Giglio is considered an expert on Twentieth Century Presidencies. His books include Truman in Cartoon and Caricature (with Greg Thielen) and The Presidency of John F. Kennedy. He has reviewed manuscripts for various presses and journals relating to recent American history, especially the Kennedy presidency. Giglio has also reviewed more than 50 books, many of them on the Truman and Kennedy presidencies, for the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, and other historical journals.

Dr. Giglio is a Professor of History and a University Distinguished Scholar at Missouri State University.

From The Presidency of John F. Kennedy
In any assessment of Kennedy, imagery will always be a formidable obstacle. Even more than an attractive personality, his fascinating family, or the images that he actively cultivated, there exists the emotion-laden images of Dallas and its immediate aftermath, which threaten to supersede all else. Who can forget the attractive, smiling couple that morning of the twenty-second at Love Field, Kennedy handsomely attired in a gray suit and pin-striped shirt and his wife in a strawberry-pink wool outfit and matching pill-box hat, cradling a bouquet of roses? Less than an hour later in the backseat of the Lincoln convertible came the loud, crackling sounds of gunfire, and his life suddenly ended. As the motorcade sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital, his disfigured head had replaced the roses in her arms.

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(2003)
Robert  Glazier

Robert Carl Glazier was born on a small farm west of Brandsville, Missouri. With much help from his dedicated parents, young Bobbie Glazier began writing newsletters at the age of three. His earliest prolific outpouring was shared with his Kansas grandparents who savored and saved every word.

In 1953 Robert C. Glazier accepted a position in Springfield, Missouri for the first full-time public relation director position in a Missouri public school system. In 1959 Robert accepted an assignment as assistant director of television and radio with the Methodist Church, and was headquartered in Nashville. In 1961 Glazier was named the first general manager of the educational station WBCN-TV, located in Nashville. In 1965 he was named executive director of the St. Louis Education TV Commission and general manager of KETC-TV in St. Louis. In 1976 Glazier was elected president of the South Education Communications Association, the nations largest public TV network. Since 1979 he has served as president of Springfield Communications Inc. and publisher of Springfield Magazine. In addition, he is past president of the Board of Directors of Cox Health on which he continues to serve.

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(1998)
Vicki  Grove

Missouri resident for 29 years at the time of her induction, Vicki Grove is the author of 9 young adult novels (including The Crystal Garden, Goodbye My Wishing Star, and Rimwalkers), short stories, and approximately 300 articles for publications such as Missouri Ruralist, Country Woman, Reader’s Digest, Country Home, New Era, Twilight Zone, Today’s Christian Woman, Teen Life, and Woman’s World. She was also hired to put together a teen devotional Bible. One of her short stories and three selections from her books have been used in English textbooks.

Grove is a popular speaker at conferences on writing children’s literature, she has served as an instructor for the Writers Hall of Fame of America Summer Writing Camp for kids, and she has given talks at hundreds of schools in a dozen states.

She has won the 1996 Magazine Merit Award given by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the G. P. Putnam’s Sons Fiction Prize, and the Excellence in Media Foundation Silver Angel Award. She has also been nominated for the Mark Twain Award 4 times.

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(2000)
C. W. Gusewelle
"If what you write is published, and if it touches people, and if you happen afterward to meet some of those readers, you will understand that writing, besides being a solitary and uncertain vocation, also is an incredibly lucky one. And it will be impossible after that to imagine having done any other kind of work." C.W. Gusewelle

Gusewelle has devoted more than 40 years to perfecting his journalism at The Kansas City Star, working as reporter, editorial writer, editor and columnist. He also excels as a fiction writer, with work appearing in Harper’s, American Heritage, The Paris Review and elsewhere. His nine books include The Rufus Chronicle, which earned the Edgar Wolfe Literary Award in 1998 and this praise from Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump: "Gusewelle sings the bittersweet song of anyone who has ever loved a good dog. I imagine Forrest Gump would have been very proud to have had Rufus as a friend."

Books
A Paris Notebook
An Africa Notebook
Quick as Shadows Passing
Far from Any Coast
A Great Current Running
The Rufus Chronicle
A Buick in the Kitchen
On the Way to Other Country
Another Cat at the Door

Scripts
A Great Current Running
This Place Called Home
Water and Fire: The Ozarks Story

Web
www.kcstar.com
Access to Gusewelle’s columns on the Kansas City Star web site
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(1995)
David  Harrison

The childlike twinkle in the eyes of this writer from Springfield, Missouri, gives you an idea why David Harrison successfully writes for children and why he has been inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame of America. He wrote his first poetry before the age of six and illustrated his own comic books at age eight. Since then, he has written more than forty books which have been translated into a dozen languages and has contributed to Family Circle, Highlights for Children, and other magazines. His books include Somebody Catch My Homework, When the Cows Come Home (a picture book), The Boy Who Counted Stars, A Thousand Cousins, and a European anthology titled The Book of Giant Stories.

David is a Member of the Springfield Schools Foundation, the chief organizer of The Write Stuff (a consortium of local writers who work with Springfield students and promote writing careers), and a Founding Member of the Writers Hall of Fame of America.

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(2002)
Ernest  Hemingway

Just out of high school, Ernest Hemingway started his career as a journalist and writer at the Kansas City Star. The Star’s style manual, which emphasized short sentences and vigorous English, helped influence Hemingway’s own style of writing which carried over into his short stories and novels.

He was the author of six collections of short stories, a book of poems, and eleven novels. Among his novels were: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. He served as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War.

Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."

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(1998)
Langston  Hughes

An award-winning poet and writer from Joplin, Missouri, James Mercer Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is considered one of the foremost interpreters of the black experience in the USA. His first poem was published when he was 19, and more than a dozen volumes of his poetry were published during his lifetime. A versatile writer, Hughes authored 2 novels (Not Without Laughter and Tambourines to Glory), 30 plays, 9 books for juveniles (including Famous American Negroes and The First Book of Jazz), 2 autobiographies (The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander), a short story collection (The Ways of White Folks), opera lyrics (Street Scene), and countless poems (including The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Song for a Dark Girl).

He served as a Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at Atlanta University and as a Poet-in-residence at the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago. He was a Columnist for the Chicago Defender and for the New York Post. Hughes was a leading figure in the "Harlem Renaissance," and he was portrayed by Danny Glover in the two-man stage show, "An Evening with Langston and Martin."

Langston Hughes won the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Award, the Opportunity magazine poetry prize, the Palm magazine Intercollegiate Poetry Award, the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative work, a Rosenwald Fellowship, the Anisfeld-Wolfe Award for Best Book on Racial Relations, and the Spingarn Medal.

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(1995)
John K. Hulston

John Hulston has practiced law in Springfield since 1946 to support his favorite avocations of history and writing. Local and regional history are favorites, which he has written about extensively in two autobiographies, An Ozarks Boy’s Story and An Ozarks Lawyer’s Story, plus three books on the histories of the Bank of Ash Grove, Bank of Billings, and Citizens Home Bank at Greenfield. Most recently, he completed the biography of Lester E. Cox: Lester E. Cox: 1895-1968, He Found Needs and Filled Them. John has contributed to the Missouri Law Review and Springfield! Magazine with articles ranging from the Battle of Wilson’s Creek to Daniel Boone’s Sons in Missouri to Mary Whitney Phelps. He has also written West Point and Wilson Creek, 1861. He currently writes "A Moment in Time", published monthly in the Ash Grove Commonwealth and Greenfield Vedette.

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(1997)
Suzann  Ledbetter

Suzann Ledbetter is a Contributing Editor for Family Circle magazine and has written ten books--including two humor collections, a university press biography, and seven novels. She received favorable reviews for her two humor books, The Toast Always Lands Jelly-Side Down and I have Everything I Had Twenty Years Ago, Except Now It’s All Lower.

Ledbetter’s biography of Nellie Cashman won her the Spur Award for nonfiction from the Western Writers of America, and she has been nominated for three more Spur awards for fiction. One of her novels has been recorded on audiotape by Columbia House, two of her historical novels have made the Midwest Bestsellers list, and two others have been optioned for possible movie production.

From I Have Everything I Had Twenty Years Ago, Except Now It’s All Lower
You know it’s going to be a bad day when . . .
After strictly adhering to a new roots-and-berries-only diet, the scale informs you that you’ve gained three pounds.
The milk you’re pouring over your morning granola has a decidedly chunky consistency.
After unsympathetically diagnosing your child’s morning headache as a bad case of biology-final flu as opposed to actual flu flu, she promptly loses her breakfast all over the hallway carpet, which makes you feel worse than she does.
You go to wake up your teenager and find that the bed hasn’t been slept in.

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(2001)
Katherine  Lederer
"I always get asked that: 'Why are you so interested in black history?' I had to do it. That's the God's truth. I just had to do it. One time I was giving a talk in Kansas City and a little boy - his eyes were still innocent ... he asked me, 'You have your people. Why did you go looking for mine?' I told him it wasn't natural. An all-white world wasn't natural to me..." - Katherine Lederer

Her name is synonymous with black history research in southwest Missouri: Katherine Lederer.

What started as a small article about the 1906 lynchings on Springfield’s Square took on a life of its own. Now, tracking black history is an integral part of her life and her career as an English professor at Missouri State Univerity. Her early life contributed greatly to Lederer’s interests. She was born in Trinity, Texas, a small, racially diverse town where laws segregated churches and schools but blacks and whites remained friends and neighbors. She received a bachelor of arts in English from Sam Houston College, a master’s degree and doctorate in English from the University of Arkansas. She is divorced and has two children, Charles Geoffrey and Susan.

Lederer has spent the last 20 years researching and cataloging the black heritage of Missouri. The result is a collection of more than 2,500 photographs and accompanying information about black residents. From that collection came a small, 1982 photo exhibit. That, in turn, grew into a book and a multimedia presentation called Many Thousand Gone: Springfield’s Lost Black History.

In addition to her many articles and books devoted to African-American and women writers, Lederer has been recognized for outstanding service to the university and the community. She donated the Lederer Ozarks African American History Collection to SMS, which will be part of the new wing of SMS’ Duane G. Meyer Library. Preservation Springfield honored her for her work in placing the former Lincoln High School on the Register of Historic Places. She also received the 1999 Governor’s Humanities Award. "Her contributions have been nothing less than incredibly significant," said Robin LeVan, Director of Development for the Missouri Humanities Council.

Lillian Hellman, 1979

Many Thousand Gone: Springfield’s Lost Black History, book, multimedia presentation, 1986

Associate Editor, Original Essays on the Poetry of Anne Sexton, 1988

Lillian Hellman, 1990, selected for inclusion on first full-text searchable CD-ROM in the humanities, American Authors; selected for inclusion on CD-ROM, Four Hundred Years of Women’s Writing

Guest editor, OzarksWatch, special double issue "African Americans in the Ozarks," Spring/Summer 1999

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(2004)
Constance  Levy

An author of poetry for children, Constance Levy has written for magazines such as Cricket, Spider, and Creative Classroom. Her books include I’m Going to Pet a Worm Today and Other Poems, A Tree Place and Other Poems, When Whales Exhale and Other Poems, A Crack in the Clouds and Other Poems (all published by Simon & Schuster) and SPLASH-Poems of Our Watery World (Orchard/Scholastic). In 1994 one of her titles was included in Bank Street College’s "Children’s Books of the Year" and she was awarded the Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Award. Her books have been included in the American Booksellers "Pick of the Lists" in 1991 and 1998, the NCTE Notable Book in Language Arts in 1995 and 1999, and the New York Library’s select 100 titles for Children’s Books in 1996. She was a nominee for the William Allen White Award in 1994 and 1996 and she won the Lee Bennet Hopkins Honor Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature in 1999.

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(2002)
David  Lipman

David Lipman is a Missouri native who graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. In 1997 he retired after spending 37 years with the Pulitzer Publishing Company. During that tenure, he served as assistant sports editor, news editor, assistant managing editor, and then fourteen years as managing editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Prior to that he served as sports editor for the Jefferson City Post-Tribune, sports editor and general news reporter for both the Springfield Daily News and Leader and Press, and general assignment reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star. He is past-president of the Missouri Press Association.

In 1989, he received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service to Journalism, and in 1997, the University of Missouri awarded Mr. Lipman an honorary doctorate of humane letters for his outstanding career in journalism. He is author or co-author of seven biographies, including Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever (autobiography of Satchel Paige), Joe Nameth: The Speed King, and Bob Gibson Pitching Ace.

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(1995)
Ellen Gray Massey

A writer from Lebanon, Missouri, Ellen Gray Massey believes the past is a guide for today, thus her interest in preserving local and regional history in her writings. She was a teacher/advisor of Bittersweet: The Ozark Quarterly, a publication of the Lebanon High School students over a ten-year period. Her writing has appeared in education journals and local magazines, including the Ozarks Mountaineer and OzarksWatch. She bases her writing on what she knows. In recent years, she has written five novels all set regionally and featuring an item of local historical interest. She is a speaker for the Missouri Humanities Council and has given numerous talks about the Ozarks and/or writing. She received the Heritage Award from the Museum of the Ozarks, Award of Merit from the National Association of State and Local History, Best Book of the Year Award from the Missouri Writers Guild, and was nominated for a Spur Award by Western Writers of America.

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(1996)
Edith  McCall

Edith McCall, a published writer since 1953, has co-authored 30 elementary-school textbooks and written 50 juvenile books and 2 adult books plus numerous nonfiction articles for various publications. She is a 4-time winner of the Missouri Writers Guild Book Award.

Her book, Conquering the Rivers: Henry Miller Sherve and the Navigation of America’s Inland Waterways, won the Captain Donald T. Wright Award in Maritime Journalism in 1992. Better than a Brother (1989) won the Chicago Reading Round Table Honor Book Award. Sometimes We Dance Alone: Your Next Years Can Be Your Best Years (1994) was selected by the Library of Congress for the visually impaired.

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(2003)
William Least Heat Moon

William Least Heat-Moon was born William Trogdon in Kansas City, Missouri, of English-Irish-Osage ancestry. He served in the United States Navy aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain. He holds a Doctorate in English literature, and a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, both from the University of Missouri at Columbia. Heat-Moon has taught literature and writing at several colleges and at the University of Missouri-Columbia; he has also taught in the Journalism School at UMC. Among his honors are the prestigious Mahan Award in Poetry and a Distinguished Alumnus Award from UMC.

He has contributed three classics to American literature: Blue Highways, selected by Time magazine as one of the five best non-fiction books of 1983 and by the New York Times as one of the notable books of the year; PrairyErth, selected by the American Library Association as the Best Work of Non-fiction for 1991 and by the New York Times as one of the Notable Books of the Year; and River-Horse, also a New York Times bestseller. His magazine articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Time, Esquire, National Geographic, and many other magazines. He is frequently spoken of as one of the finest American travel writers. He lives near Columbia, Missouri not far from bluffs overlooking the Missouri River.

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(2001)
Johnny  Mullins
"Irving Berlin once said song-writing is 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration. As far as writing a song itself, I would say you just have to have the inborn knack for putting words together. I'm not saying I have that talent. I just dig a little deeper." -Johnny Mullins

He would write his first song at age 11 from what he learned growing up in rural Missouri - "Rabbit in a Briar Patch." Few heard that song, but millions heard the song Johnny Mullins wrote years later - "Blue Kentucky Girl," when it went to the top of the music charts and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1980.

Mullins was born in Barry County, reared in a log cabin and attended the same one-room schoolhouse for eight years. As a youngster he worked the wheat harvests in Kansas and Nebraska. His first song, "Rabbit in a Briar Patch," went virtually unheard but years later the most famous country singers would record many of the songs he wrote.

He left home after eighth grade, joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and eventually labored for about 12 years as a lumberjack in the Northwest. That experience inspired an early song "Yukon".

He moved to Springfield in 1952, married and settled down to write more songs while working at Producers Creamery, and joined the Springfield Public Schools system as a custodian in 1957. He retired from the school system at age 60 to write songs full time, but that was after many hit songs, which he composed on his guitar at home before work between 4 a.m. and "shavin’ time".

His only training in music was a harmony and composition correspondence course he completed more than 50 years ago. It was through a friendship with country singer Porter Wagoner that Mullins’ song "Company’s Comin’" was first recorded in 1954 and hit it big on the country charts. He continued writing mostly country and gospel, some of which were recorded, but hundreds of others he says he threw away.

Mullins had a least one chance to write exclusively for a publisher in Nashville but never wanted to make the move. "I like the Ozarks," he said.

"Company’s Comin’", recorded by Porter Wagoner and others including Red Foley

"Success", recorded by Loretta Lynn

"Legend of the Big River Train", recorded by the Wilburn Brothers and by Porter Wagoner

"I Dreamed I Saw America on Her Knees", recorded by Porter Wagoner

"Move Up a Little Closer", recorded by several quartets

"Blue Kentucky Girl", recorded by Loretta Lynn; a later recording by Emmylou Harris was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1980

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(1999)
John  Neihardt

John Neihardt (1881-1973), wrote his first book, The Divine Enchantment, at 16 years of age and it was published before he was 20.

He edited a country weekly, the Bancroft Blade, for several years. He devoted 18 years to writing his major work, the epic poem, A Cycle of the West. He served as literary editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1926 to 1938, and as lecturer in English and poet-in-residence at the University of Missouri from 1949 to 1965.

Neihardt authored 32 books of poetry, fiction and philosophy.

His awards include: Poet Laureate of Nebraska in 1921; Poetry Society national prize; Prairie Poet Laureate of America by Poets Laureate International; named foremost poet in nation by the Poetry Center of New York.

He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and served as vice-president for the Middle West in the Poetry Society of America.

His credits include (partial list): Black Elk Speaks, A Cycle of the West, The Song of Hugh Glass, The Ancient Memory & Other Stories, The Giving Earth: A John Neihardt Reader, The Quest, All Is But a Beginning, When the Tree Flowered, The Stranger at the Gate, The Splendid Wayfaring.

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(2003)
Vance  Randolph

Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, Vance Randolph would eventually become known as the premiere Ozarks folklorist. But for most of his adult life he made his living as a writer. During his career, he worked as a ghostwriter for Vanguard Press, an editorial writer for the Appeal to Reason, as a feature writer and columnist for various newspapers, was a scenario writer for MGM in Hollywood, and served as assistant state supervisor for the Federal Writers Project of Missouri.

Encouraged by Carl Sandburg to collect folksongs, he began his work as a folklorist, eventually becoming the first field worker for the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress.

Among his nearly 200 articles were ones published in such diverse publications as Life Magazine, Sports Afield, New York Times, Field & Stream, American Anthropologist, the Ozarks Mountaineer and the Kansas City Times.

Randolph’s first book, The Ozarks, was published in 1931 and he went on to write and sell 22 others with such publishers as Caxton, Alfred Knopf, and a number of University presses. His works such as Ozark Superstitions, Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech, Ozark Folklore: A Bibliography, and his four-volume set of Ozark Folksongs are now considered classics.

Randolph also authored 55 booklets for publisher Haldeman-Julius and wrote under 12 pseudonyms. His honors included an honorary doctorate from the University of Arkansas, a Meritorious Achievement Award from Pittsburg State, was named a Fellow of the American Folklore Society, was proclaimed ‘Poet Laureate of the Ozarks’ by the Greater Ozarks Hall of Fame, and had ‘Vance Randolph Day’ proclaimed in Arkansas.

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(1996)
Jory  Sherman

Jory Sherman has published more than 150 books since 1959. His novel, Grass Kingdom (1994), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Letters. A former magazine editor on the west coast, he has also been a book producer, creating series for Zebra, Avon, Bantam, and Paperjacks, and packaging for Harlequin/Gold Eagle, Frontier Library, and others. Sherman created the successful Rivers West series, published by Bantam, and he has written five novels for the series: The Arkansas River (1991), The Rio Grande (1994), The Columbia River (1996), The South Platte, and The Brazos.

He has also published poetry in literary magazines since 1957. His first book of poetry, So Many Rooms, sold out in several printings. He has read his poetry extensively on the west coast and on National Public Radio.

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(2004)
John Ernst Steinbeck

John Steinbeck, 1902-1968 was the author of sixteen novels, a collection of short stories, four screenplays, a sheaf of journalistic essays-including four collections, three travel narratives, a translation and two published journals, and three "play-novellas" on Broadway. His first novel was published in 1929. He served as an overseas war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune during World War II. Some of his most well-known books were The Red Pony, Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, The Pearl, and East of Eden. Nine of his novels have been made into movies. In 1937, "Of Mice & Men," his novella/play won the Drama Critics Circle Award. In 1940, he won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 and in 1964 President Johnson awarded him the United States Medal of Freedom.

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(2003)
Barbara Bradford Taylor

Born in Upper Armley, Leeds, in Yorkshire, Barbara was the only child of Winston and Freda Taylor. Ask the internationally renowned best-selling author who influenced her the most throughout her childhood, and she will unhesitatingly tell you it was her mother. Freda Taylor was a former children’s nurse and nanny -- and a voracious reader who introduced Barbara to books at the tender age of 4. By the time she was 12, she had read all of Dickens and the Brontes. Seeds for the future were sown.

After attending Christ Church Elementary School and Northcote Private School for Girls, Barbara Taylor Bradford started work as a typist for the Yorkshire Evening Post. She was 15 1/2. Within six months she was promoted to cub reporter in the newsroom. "It was because I was such a bad typist and was ruining so much of their expensive paper!" she joked. Nevertheless, at 18 she became the newspaper’s Woman’s Page Editor. At age 20 she decided to head for London, where she became Fashion Editor of the magazine Woman’s Own. In the ensuing years in Fleet Street, hub of Britain’s publishing empire, she covered every beat from crime to show business reporting for the London Evening News, Today Magazine and other publications. The grounding paid off. Today Barbara Taylor Bradford is published in 89 countries in 39 languages, with sales figures in excess of 62 million. Barbara is an American citizen and lives in New York City with her husband, Bob.

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(1995)
Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemons) Twain

Sieur Louis de Conte, Josh, S. L. C., Quentin Curtis Snodgrass, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Samuel Clemens, or just Mark Twain (1835-1910) --he is one of the most popular and well-known Missouri writers. His two most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, deal with the social issues of hypocrisy, slavery, and materialism. His works continue to be published and remain popular more than 85 years after his death.

Clemens was an author who cared about the future and did what he could to convince the human race to wake up and look at the world we are creating. His writings, although written well over a century ago, continue to have contemporary influence.

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(1998)
Robert  Vaughan

Born in Morley, Missouri, and resident of Sikeston, Missouri, Robert Vaughan has written more than 250 books using some 30 pen names. His novels include Andersonville (from the screenplay of the TV miniseries), Survival: A Novel of The Donner Party, Brandywine’s War, The Valkyrie Mandate, The Power and the Pride, Gravedancer, When Honor Dies, and The Broken Covenant. His pseudonyms include Jonathon Scofield, Lee Davis Willoughby, Paula Fairman, K. C. McKenna, Paula Moore, Patricia Matthews, and Kit Dalton.

Vaughan is the author of the noted American Chronicles series of historical novels, the writer of 4 screenplays for Paragon Pictures, and a former publisher and editor of a newspaper in Sikeston, Missouri. He is also a popular how-to and motivational speaker to writers’ organizations, and he is Western Writers of America Member.

A Pulitzer Prize nominee, Vaughan has won the Western Writers of America Spur Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Golden Triangle Writers Club, the Best Novel of the Vietnam War from Canadian University Symposium, and the Porgie Award from West Coast Books. He has also been named the Best Military Writer of the Year by Army Aviation Digest for six consecutive years.

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(1999)
Michael  Wallis

Michael Wallis worked as a newspaper correspondent in Santa Fe, as a reporter, editor, and bureau chief in Texas, as a special correspondent of Time-Life, and as a special correspondent to Time Magazine.

He is the author of several acclaimed non-fiction books, and the founder and editor of Esperanza: A Quarterly of Literature and Art.

He has been a contributor to such prestigious periodicals as Life, Smithsonian, New York Times, and Outside.

He has received three Pultizer Prize nominations and a National Book Award nomination. He garnered the Top Feature Writer Award for the Floria Magazine Association and has been inducted into the Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of Fame. He is also a winner of the Mountain Plains Library Association Literary Contribution Award, the Steinbeck Award, and the Lynn Riggs Award from Rogers State College. He is also the first-ever inductee into the Oklahoma Route 66 Hall of Fame.

His credits include (partial list): Mankiller: A Chief and Her People; Pretty Boy: The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd; Way Down Yonder in the Indian Nation; Route 66: The Mother Road; The Making of the West; Oil Man: The Story of Frank Phillips, Birth of Phillips Petroleum.

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(2002)
Margaret  Weis

Margaret Weis, a native of Independence, Missouri, is a book editor and the author of numerous juvenile fiction and nonfiction books including Wanted: Frank and Jesse James, the Real Story, which was her first book and was published in 1981. Ms. Weis is also a prolific author of science fiction and fantasy novels for adults. Included in her titles are Endless Catacombs, The Tower of Midnight Dreams and four novels in the Star of the Guardian series. In addition, she has co-authored a number of series with Tracy Hickman, including the Dragonlance Chronicles, Dragonlance Legends, The Raistlin Chronicles, The Darksword Trilogy, The Rose of the Prophet Trilogy, the Deathgate series, the Starshield books, and the Sovereign Stone Triad. She has also co-authored The Mag Force 7 series with her husband, Don Perrin and the Testament of the Dragon series with her son, David Baldwin. She has edited and contributed stories to the 13-book collection of short stories under the Dragonlance Tales banner. Many of her novels have been bestsellers and the Dragonlance series of novels alone have sold some 20-million copies worldwide.

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(1996)
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Twenty-five years after they were published, nine of the Little House books written by Mansfield author Laura Ingalls Wilder appeared on the Publishers Weekly list of All-Time Best-Selling Paperback Children’s Books--and these are only the HarperCollins versions first reprinted in 1971, with 26,112,962 copies at the time of Wilder’s Writers Hall of Fame of America induction.

The novels of the Late Laura Ingalls Wilder are based on her life: "I was born in the Little House in the Big Woods of Wisconsin on February 7 in the year 1867. I lived everything that happened in my books. It is a long story, filled with sunshine and shadow. . ." and apparently a story millions of readers find fascinating.

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(1998)
Lanford  Wilson

Born in Lebanon, Missouri, Lanford Wilson is a noted and award-winning playwright. One of the most successful and prolific of all the playwrights to emerge from the Off-Off Broadway movement of the 1960’s. He is the author of over 30 plays and the co-author (with Tennessee Williams) of a TV film script, The Migrants. He is the author of a screenplay, One Arm, which is an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams story. His Redwood Curtain was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV production. His Fifth of July and Lemon Sky were also made into TV movies.

He has received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, the Vernon Rice Drama Desk Award, a Yale University Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Emmy and Toni nominations, the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Village Voice "Obie" Award.

His plays are studied as examples of modern American Drama in college courses across the nation. As Co-founder (and resident playwright) of the Circle Repertory Company in New York, he provided an avenue for other playwrights to get their plays produced on stage.

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(1997)
Harold Bell Wright

Around the turn of the century, Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944) lived in a tent on top of a high hill in southwest Missouri and began writing a book about his new friends--"the people of the district, with their simple, direct ideals and way of life." That best-selling novel, The Shepherd of the Hills, became so popular that readers traveled to the area west of Branson, Missouri, now called Inspiration Point, to see the site of Sammy Lane’s cabin, the Matthew’s homestead, and the sheep ranch in Mutton Hollow. A dramatization of the novel is performed in an outdoor theater in Branson during the summer. Wright, who spent 10 years preaching in Missouri, Kansas, and California, wrote 16 other novels between 1910 and 1942.

From the Introduction to The Shepherd of the Hills
This, my story, is a very old story.
In the hills of life there are two trails. One lies along the higher sunlit fields where those who journey see afar, and the light lingers even when the sun is down; and one leads to the lower ground, where those who travel, as they go, look always over their shoulders with eyes of dread, and gloomy shadows gather long before the day is done.
This, my story, is the story of a man who took the trail that leads to the lower ground, and of a woman, and how she found her way to the higher sunlit fields.
In this story, it all happened in the Ozarks Mountains, many miles from what we of the city call civilization. In life, it has all happened many, many times before, in many, many places. The two trails lead afar. The story, so very old, is still in the telling.

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