T. Lindsay Baker is the author of two dozen books on the history of the American West, and is known to many Western Writers of America members as the man who spent a year and a half living in a dirt-floored sod house on the southern Great Plains in the Texas Panhandle. He holds the W. K. Gordon Endowed Chair in Texas Industrial History at Tarleton State University; he and his wife, Julie, live on his great-grandparents’ farm between Fort Worth and Waco, Texas.
Christy and Selah Award winner and finalist author Stephen Bly authored and coauthored with his wife, Janet, more than 105 fiction and nonfiction books, including historical and contemporary Westerns. He mentored hundreds of beginning writers; spoke for writer’s conferences, men’s retreats, and family camps across the country; and as an avid collector of antique Winchesters and gun show participant, was roving editor for Big Show Journal. He served as mayor of Winchester, Idaho, and also pastored churches in California and Idaho. For more information, go to www.BlyBooks.com.
Johnny D. Boggs is a past president of Western Writers of America and six-time Spur Award winner. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he edits WWA’s Roundup™ magazine. A South Carolina native, Boggs worked fourteen and half years in Texas as a newspaper journalist in Dallas and Fort Worth before moving to New Mexico in 1998 to write books and magazine articles full-time. Other honors include a Western Heritage Wrangler Award, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture’s Rounders Award, and a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications. His website is www.JohnnyDBoggs.com.
Natalie Bright is an author, blogger, speaker, and cattle ranch owner. Her stories and articles have appeared in numerous publications, including “A Cowboy’s Christmas Blessing” in West Texas Christmas Stories by TCU Press. She holds a BBA from WTSU, enjoys talking to all ages about writing, and is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of the Western lifestyle. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter @natNKB, Amazon Author Pages, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Her website is nataliebright.com. She blogs every Monday about story craft at wordsmithsix.com.
Historian and author Nancy Burgess is a Phoenix native and has a lifelong interest in and passion for Arizona history. Ranch Dog, a tribute to the working dog in the American West, was published in 2000. A Photographic Tour of 1916 Prescott, Arizona was published in 2005 and reprinted in 2015. In 2012 Nancy completed two books, Around Yavapai County, Celebrating Arizona’s Centennial and An Illustrated History of Mayer, Arizona: Stagecoaches, Mining, Ranching and the Railroad. An Arizona Auto Adventure: Clarence Boynton’s 1913 Travelogue was published in 2013. Nancy is a dedicated, longtime collector of Arizona postcards and photographs, and her books have been extensively illustrated with images from her collections. She was honored as an Arizona Culturekeeper in 2008 and received the Sharlot Hall Award in 2010 and the Prescott Western Heritage Foundation Award in 2013.
Award-winning author, historian, and lecturer Jan Cleere writes extensively about the people who first settled in the desert Southwest. She is the author of five historical nonfiction books and featured in three anthologies. Jan is a Road Scholar with the Arizona Humanities Council, serves on the Coordinating Council of the Arizona Women’s Heritage Trail, and is a board member of the Arizona Authors Association. She also writes a monthly column for Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star, Western Women, detailing the lives of some of Arizona’s early amazing women.
Nancy Coggeshall has been a freelance writer in Rhode Island, New Mexico, and rural Quebec. Her first book, Gila Country Legend: The Life and Times of Quentin Hulse, bracketed by the account of her life with him, was published in 2009 and is now in paper. Quentin began cooking for cowboys at the age of twelve. He relished someone else cooking for him but stepped up for the tried-and-true New Mexico cowboy favorites: beans; red chile; menudo, a soup made with tripe; and another soup, posole, made with hominy and pork—though Quentin used pigs’ feet.
Award-winning author Paul Colt favors unexpected history. His stories often feature some little-known or overlooked aspect of an otherwise familiar character or event. Paul’s analytical insight, investigative research, and genuine horse sense bring history to life. His characters walk off the pages of history into the reader’s imagination in a style that blends Jeff Shaara’s historical dramatizations with Robert B. Parker’s gritty dialogue.
Paul’s first book with Five Star, Boots and Saddles: A Call to Glory, received the Marilyn Brown Novel Award, presented by Utah Valley University for excellence in unpublished work prior to its release in 2013. His Grasshoppers in Summer received finalist recognition in the Western Writers of America 2009 Spur Awards.
Paul’s work in Western fiction gives creative expression to a lifelong love of the West. He gets his boots dirty researching a story, whenever possible from the back of a horse. Learn more at www.paulcolt.com.
Hank Corless is an American historian and freelance writer. His primary works in Western Americana consist of numerous short stories in Western journals such as Old West and True West, and he is the author of a nonfiction cultural work on Native Americans, The Weiser Indians, along with several genealogies. He serves on the writing staff of a sports organization, where his most recent literary endeavors include a great many articles on college sports and sports personalities. When not writing, Hank spends much of his time as a lecturer, tour guide, and exhibit host at the Idaho State Historical Society’s Old Idaho Penitentiary site.
Carol Crigger got her first cookbook as an eight-year-old. She found the recipes tasted bland and were too simple, which probably led to her lifelong penchant for tweaking recipes. Her strictest critic was not her brother, but an aunt known to visit at dinnertime. Upon being invited to eat, Aunt Effie would reply, “I couldn’t eat a bite” or a terse “I’ve et.” It depended on the menu. Carol learned the term chiffonade from TV cooking shows, although she’s used the technique. Mostly, like her fictional heroine, China Bohannon, she is a bare-bones cook.
Kellen Cutsforth is the author of Buffalo Bill, Boozers, Brothels, and Bare Knuckle Brawlers: An Englishman’s Journal of Adventure in America. He has also published numerous articles in Wild West magazine and Western Writers of America’s Roundup magazine. Kellen has also provided his services as a professional “ghost writer,” authoring biographies and memoirs. Along with those accomplishments, he is a longtime member and social media manager for WWA and the Western history group Denver Posse of Westerners. He is also a past president of the Denver Posse of Westerners.
Sandra Dallas is the New York Times best-selling author of fourteen novels, two young adult novels, and ten nonfiction books, almost all of them about the West. She is a three-time winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award, for The Chili Queen, Tallgrass, and The Last Midwife, and a four-time winner of the Women Writing the West WILLA Award. In addition, she is the recipient of the Denver Public Library’s Eleanor Gehres Award and the Pikes Peak Library District’s Frank Waters Award. Sandra was Denver chief for Business Week magazine and the publication’s first female bureau manager.
First published in her teens by a men’s magazine, Barbara Dan continued writing in a variety of genres before accepting a dare from her brother, poet Alan MacDougall, in 1988 to write a “bodice ripper.” Since then she has written twelve historical romance novels, including five Westerns. Her latest, Home Is Where the Heart Is, features a resourceful young lady, Meg, who boards an orphan train to get to her new job on a Wyoming ranch. En route most orphans get adopted, except three. When Sam, her employer, finds himself saddled with a ready-made family, all hell breaks out!
Terry Del Bene is an archaeologist and has authored several books, including the Donner Party Cookbook, Phone on the Range, and ’Dem Bon’z, among others. He writes freelance articles about the West for various publications and has a monthly series in True West magazine titled Survival Out West. You can learn the history they never taught you in school at www.pulphistory.com.
Robert Flynn is the author of ten novels. Wanderer Springs and Echoes of Glory received Spur Awards; North to Yesterday received a Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. He has also written two memoirs and three short story collections. His latest book is Holy Literary License: The Almighty Chooses Fallible Mortals to Write, Edit and Translate GodStory.
Nicole Maddalo Dixon was born in Philadelphia but moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with her family at the age of thirteen, where she still resides with her husband, Wallace. She has been writing since the age of six. She finally decided to compose a series worth publication in 2009, and in 2012 she submitted the manuscript for the first book in her series, Bandita Bonita: Romancing Billy the Kid, and was excited to have been accepted. The second book in the series, Bandita Bonita and Billy the Kid: The Scourge of New Mexico, was released in 2016. Her website is www.nicolemdixonauthor.com.
Emil Franzi was born in Boston and raised in Glendale, California. His father was in the theater business and as a kid, he saw many Westerns and “later got cute girls jobs selling candy.” A member of Phi Kappa Psi, he graduated from the University of Arizona in the 1960s with a BA in history. He had various endeavors from copy writer to political consultant, and is a lifer Young Republican. Franzi has been a newspaper and magazine columnist, did freelance work, and added radio host to his list of careers in the ’90s. His wife, Kathleen, had real job and paid the mortgage. They’ve lived on twenty acres in the Tortolitas, which is northwest of Tucson, since 1973. He and his wife have been married for fifty-one years. They have three daughters, one granddaughter, and four dogs. Franzi started the radio program Voices of the West in 2006 and it is currently heard as a Podcast. In 2014 he was awarded Western Writers of America’s Lariat Award.
Micki Fuhrman grew up in a river town in northwest Louisiana, where stories hung in the air at church picnics, back porch singings, and country store counters. She first wrote poetry for a school newspaper and by her teens was a professional singer/songwriter, appearing on the Louisiana Hayride and guest-starring on the Grand Ole Opry. Now a Nashville resident, Micki segued into literary writing in 2013. She has won awards for her short fiction (2015 WWA Spur Finalist, 2015 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Finalist) and is at work on a novel set in the Cherokee Territory of Appalachia. She loves driving back roads, antiquing, and cooking for crowds.
Rachelle “Rocky” Gibbons grew up along the San Pedro River in southern Arizona. Her writing career began in 1975, when she wrote advertising copy for Columbia Pictures radio station KCPX in Salt Lake City. She then went on to become a broadcast media buyer for Western International Media of Los Angeles. The Big Buckaroo character in her children’s books is based on her late cousin, rodeo star and Robbers Roost rancher A. C. Ekker. She is presently working on a juvenile fiction book and a biography of Bridget Sullivan, the Irish maid from the infamous Lizzie Borden trial. Rocky lives in the peaceful community of Central, Utah, with her husband and dogs.
Bill Groneman was born and raised in New York City and now lives in Texas. He writes about John Steinbeck, Davy Crockett, the Alamo, and September 11, 2001. Bill has been a member of the Western Writers of America since 1993 and has served on the WWA’s executive board twice. He looks forward to attending the WWA’s convention every year, where he lends his voice and guitar to the nightly music. He is the composer of the song Western Writers of America and founder of the fabulous “Gronettes” chorus line.
USA Today best-selling author Shanna Hatfield writes character-driven romances with relatable heroes and heroines. Her historical Westerns have been described as “reminiscent of the era captured by Bonanza and The Virginian,” while her contemporary works have been called “laugh-out-loud funny, and a little heart-pumping sexy without being explicit in any way.”
Convinced everyone deserves a happy ending, this hopeless romantic is out to make it happen, one story at a time. When she isn’t writing or indulging in chocolate (dark and decadent, please), Shanna hangs out with her husband, lovingly known as Captain Cavedweller.
Jan C. Hill was born and raised on Long Island, New York. As a child she loved watching TV Westerns so much that she was known as “Texanna Wells” to her playground friends! A graduate of both Marymount College and Hofstra University, she taught children with special needs for over thirty years. Now retired, Jan has more time to accompany her author husband Bill on their many trips along the Western trails. She coauthored their activity books for young children, Heading West, Heading Southwest, This Is the Place, West with Lewis and Clark, and Riding with the Pony.
Anne Hillerman is the author of the continuation of the popular Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee mysteries series created by her father, Tony Hillerman, and updated to include a powerful woman crime-solver, Bernadette Manuelito. Anne began her writing career as a newspaper reporter, and continues in journalism with the juicy job of restaurant critic for the Albuquerque Journal. She learned to cook from her mother, beginning with grilled cheese sandwiches, and considers home-cooked meals worth the effort—at least most days. A New Mexican since the age of four, she lives in Santa Fe with her husband, photographer Don Strel. She’s also a Spur winner.
Award-winning author Tammy Hinton explains, “I don’t want to live anywhere where men don’t wear boots and a Stetson hat.” Maybe that has an influence on her desire to write books that have a Western flavor. Her books Unbridled and Retribution won the prestigious Will Rogers Medallion Award and Best Western Novel from the Western Fictioneers. Unbridled also was a finalist for the Spur Award from Western Writers of America and the WILLA Award from Women Writing the West.
Ms. Hinton earned a BS in education from Black Hills State University. While there, Friends of the Leland D. Case Library for Western Historical Studies presented her a scholarship for her academic achievement. Visit http://www.tammyhinton.com
Denzel Holmes started writing after a thirty-one-year career as an auditor with the federal government. He is a product of rural West Texas, where he was regaled with cowboy and Indian tales from early youth. Western was a natural genre when he acted on his lifelong desire to write at age fifty-seven. When he joined Western Writers of America, he lowered the average member age by ten years. Published by Trebleheart Books from 2009 to 2012, when Lee Emory closed out her business, he self-published and continued to use the same editor. He has six novels now.
Her parents were always seeking greener grass, so Maxine Isackson was often the new kid in school. She found new friends in books. With her love of books, it was only natural she began writing when her own children were grown. She did a lot of freelance articles then turned to Western fiction, taking material from the old-timers she admired. She has published eight books and has another in the chute. Her website is maxine isackson.com.
Linda Jacobs is the author of the WILLA and Spur award–winning Yellowstone Series of novels—Summer of Fire, Rain of Fire, Lake of Fire, and Jackson Hole Journey—and two contemporary romances. Linda also had a thirty-year career as a professional petroleum geologist in Houston. Now retired to her family farm in Virginia, she and her husband, Richard, love adventure travel and reading the next great Western.
Born on the Klamath Reservation in Oregon and enrolled with the Modoc tribe of Oklahoma, Cheewa James has authored MODOC: The Tribe That Wouldn’t Die and three other books on Native people. She has written for True West, Smithsonian, National Wildlife, and newspapers across the country. A former TV anchorwoman and reporter, Cheewa feels learning to write in short sentences, right to the point, and using expressive, simple words was a great guide as she developed her writing. Currently a professional motivational speaker, she says, “Being a good storyteller is important both on the platform and in creating a story on paper.”
Gail L. Jenner and her fourth-generation-cowboy husband live on the 140-year-old family homestead. Gail and six other “Jenner women” have created Jenner Family Beef, selling 100 percent all-natural, ranch-bred beef locally and online. Today Jenner Cattle Company continues its historic traditions, including processing its own beef, hams, bacon, sausages, even apple cider! A teacher, Gail has written ten books, including seven nonfiction titles and the WILLA Award–winning Across the Sweet Grass Hills. She is a California Cattle Woman, gardener, and award-winning cook with recipes appearing in Better Homes & Gardens, Everyday with Rachael Ray, and Country Woman magazines.
Singer/songwriter and author Jim Jones is a native Texan, a student of the West, and a lifelong devotee of all things cowboy. He is an award-winning musician and author, producing nine Western folk albums, three Western novels, and a compilation of his blog titled Western Takes: Perspectives on the Meaning of Life and Other Stuff. His fourth novel, The Big Empty, was published by Five Star in 2016. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Ann, and their two dogs, Jessie and Colter.
Colorado author Joyce B. Lohse combines her journalism education and background, genealogy research skills, and a passion for history to preserve and share stories of Western pioneers through award-winning biographies, articles, and presentations. Subjects include Molly Brown, Baby Doe Tabor, General William Palmer, Dr. Justina Ford, educator Emily Griffith, and the original governor and first lady of Colorado, John and Eliza Routt. Her latest title is Spencer Penrose: Builder and Benefactor. Lohse has made appearances and presented programs at over 150 events during the past decade. She is longtime administrator for Women Writing the West. Her website is www.LohseWorks.com.
Sharon Magee, a Phoenix-based writer and award-winning author, specializes in history with a heavy emphasis on the American Indian. She is also a generalist with extensive publishing credits in such magazines as Arizona Highways, Phoenix Magazine, The Valley Guide Quarterly, Priorities, and Phoenix Downtown. Magee has won numerous awards, including the Outstanding Writing Award from the Arizona Newspaper Foundation. She also wrote the award-winning Geronimo! Stories of an American Legend and was a contributing author to Arizona Goes to War, also an award winner. She and her husband live in Phoenix. Between them they have four beautiful children and three awesome grandsons.
History has fascinated Bill Markley since childhood on the family farm near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Moving to Pierre, South Dakota, in 1976 to work for the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources, he immersed himself in local history, leading to participating in films such as Dances with Wolves. Bill has written a novel, Deadwood Dead Men; three Western nonfiction books; and for True West and Wild West magazines. He has served for 25 years as Western Writers of America’s membership chairman, writes Roundup’sTM Techno-Savvy, and served on the board of directors. In 2015 Bill was sworn in as an honorary Dodge City Marshal. Bill and his wife, Liz, live in Pierre, where they have raised two grown children.
Susan Matley writes sci-fantasy and Western historical fiction. Her sci-fantasy novella Small-g City (by S. D. Matley) is her first published book-length work. Previously, her short stories have appeared in the THEMA literary journal, GlassFire magazine, and Dark Pages (Blade Red Press). She’s a member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West. In 2011 she was a finalist for the WWA “Best Song” Spur Award. Susan lives near Walla Walla, Washington, amidst thousands of acres of wheat (not hers!) with husband Bruce and many four-legged kids.
Shoni Maulding twists horse tail hairs together to make hitched horsehair art. Her husband, Ron, adds silver and stones. For museum-quality pieces, they have a story—like their award-winning ensemble Flight of the Nez Perce. Or using Montana jasper on rosettes for their Griz on Horse Prairie bridle. Shoni received the Will Rogers Cowboy Award from the Academy of Western Artists and was inducted into the Stetson Craftsman Alliance. She has been a technical adviser for others on various projects and teaches hitching workshops. Ron and Shoni’s how-to books have sold in twenty-three countries. They live on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. Their website is www.hitchedhorsehair.com.
When not scaling mountain peaks or fording raging rivers, Team Gritty—award-winning photographer and videographer Jennifer Smith-Mayo, Spur Award–winning author Matthew P. Mayo, and Tess the Wonderpup—run Gritty Press (www.GrittyPress.com) and rove North America in search of hot coffee, tasty whiskey, and high adventure.
Monty McCord is a retired law enforcement officer and graduate of the FBI National Academy at Quantico, Virginia. He served as a deputy sheriff in two sheriff’s offices before retiring from the Hastings, Nebraska, police department as a lieutenant. An avid interest in history, especially of lawmen, led to the writing life. He serves as president of the Adams County Historical Society board of directors and is a member of the Western Writers of America. McCord writes fiction and nonfiction about lawmen and outlaws from the Old West to the mid-twentieth century. In 2015 Monty was sworn in as an honorary Dodge City Marshal.
Dennis McCown is a college instructor in Texas. Born and raised in Wyoming, he is proud of his “cowboy” heritage. Though he has traveled widely, he always comes back to his roots. After hearing about Helen Mrose, McCown spent sixteen years researching her incredible story, which resulted in The Goddess of War: A True Story of Passion, Betrayal, and Murder in the Old West. Under the pseudonym Butch Denny, he published Savage Winter: A Story of Wilderness and Survival. A member of the Western Writers of America, McCown is also in the Wild West History Association and the Single-Action Shooting Society.
Sandra McGee has a fascination with the Reno divorce era of the 1930s and ’40s that began three decades ago when she met her husband, Bill McGee, a former dude wrangler on Nevada’s most exclusive dude ranch that catered to wealthy Easterners and Hollywood celebrities, most seeking a six-week divorce. Together they wrote about this little-known period of contemporary Western history in The Divorce Seekers: A Photo Memoir of a Nevada Dude Wrangler (print edition) and The Cowboyin’ Years, 1947–1950 (Kindle edition). When not writing, Sandra’s passions are movies from the 1930s and ’40s and ballet.
William L. McGee was born and raised on a ranch in Montana. After the war, from 1947 to 1950, he was a horse wrangler in Yellowstone National Park, a trail and deer-hunting guide at Lake Tahoe, and a dude wrangler on the Flying M.E., Nevada’s most exclusive dude ranch outside of Reno that catered to wealthy Easterners and Hollywood celebrities, most seeking a six-week divorce. Bill and his coauthor/wife, Sandra, captured his stories in his memoir set in the contemporary West: The Divorce Seekers: A Photo Memoir of a Nevada Dude Wrangler (print) and The Cowboyin’ Years, 1947–1950 (Kindle).
Three-time winner and three-time finalist for the WWA Spur Award, Rod Miller writes fiction, history, and poetry about his lifelong home, the American West. A former member of the WWA executive board and longtime membership chair, Miller received the Branding Iron Award in 2014 for his service to Western Writers of America. His taste buds rattled loose during his years riding rodeo bucking horses, so his food preferences are plain and simple. He is not impressed with fancy “plating” or “presentation” and finds the word “foodie” unappetizing.
Tucson author Susan Cummins Miller, a research affiliate of the University of Arizona’s Southwest Institute for Research on Women, worked as a field geologist and college instructor before turning to writing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She edited A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800–1922; pens the award-winning Frankie MacFarlane, Geologist mysteries; and publishes poems, short stories, and essays in regional journals and anthologies, including What Wildness Is This: Women Write about the Southwest and Roundup! Western Writers of America Presents Great Stories of the West from Today’s Leading Western Writers. Her website is www.susancumminsmiller.com.
Award-winning author Meg Mims writes historical and contemporary novels, novellas, and short stories plus hundreds of freelance articles. She earned a Best First Novel Spur Award from Western Writers of America for Double Crossing and a Laramie Award for the sequel Double or Nothing. Meg is also one-half of the D. E. Ireland writing team for the Agatha-nominated Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins mystery series. She’ll be writing as Meg Macy for a new cozy mystery series featuring a teddy bear toy shop for Kensington in 2017. A resident of southeastern Michigan, Meg enjoys gardening, crafts, watercolor painting, and housework last.
Sherry Monahan served as Western Writers of America’s president from 2014 to 2016 and began her author career when she penned her first book, Taste of Tombstone, in 1998. It was her passion for food and history that led her to create that first book. She now has several books on daily life and women in the West. That same passion landed her a monthly magazine column in 2009 when she began writing her food column in True West titled Frontier Fare. Her last two books were historical cookbooks called Frontier Fare and The Cowboy’s Cookbook. She’s also written for Arizona Highways and Cowboys & Indians.
Sherry has appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies, AHC’s Gunslingers, and on the History Channel in many shows. She earned a Wrangler in the 2010 Western Heritage Awards for her performance in the Cowboys and Outlaws show. In 2015 Sherry was sworn in as an honorary Dodge City Marshal. In 2016, she was awarded the Gold Will Rogers Medallion for The Cowboy’s Cookbook. Her website is www.sherrymonahan.com.
David Morrell is the critically acclaimed author of First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created. He holds a PhD in American literature from Penn State and was a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa. His numerous New York Times best-sellers include the classic spy novel, The Brotherhood of the Rose (the basis for the only television miniseries to be broadcast after a Super Bowl). An Edgar and Anthony finalist, and Nero and Macavity winner, Morrell is a recipient of three Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the prestigious Thriller Master award from the International Thriller Writers organization. His writing book, The Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing, discusses what he has learned in his more than four decades as an author. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Wyoming native Candy Moulton has written thirteen Western history books; coedited a collection of short fiction and an encyclopedia; and written, produced, and been a reenactor in several documentary films. She won a Spur Award from Western Writers of America in 2006 for her biography, Chief Joseph: Guardian of the People. She won another Spur in 2010 for In Pursuit of a Dream, the documentary film she wrote and produced with Boston Productions Inc. (BPI) for the Oregon-California Trails Association. Footsteps to the West for the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, Wyoming, was a Spur finalist for Best Documentary in 2003.
John Nesbitt lives in the plains country of Wyoming, where he teaches English and Spanish at Eastern Wyoming College. His articles, reviews, fiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has had more than thirty books published, including short story collections, contemporary novels, and traditional Westerns, as well as textbooks for his courses. John has won two awards from the Wyoming State Historical Society, two awards from Wyoming Writers for encouragement of other writers and service to the organization, two Wyoming Arts Council literary fellowships, a Will Rogers Medallion Award for Dark Prairie and another for Thorns on the Rose, a Western Writers of America Spur finalist award for his novel Raven Springs, and the Spur Award for At the End of the Orchard and for his novels Trouble at the Redstone and Stranger in Thunder Basin. His most recent work consists of Field Work, a retro-noir fiction collection; Thorns on the Rose; and Justice at Redwillow.
Thom Nicholson was born in Missouri and raised around Fort Smith, Arkansas. He grew up watching local rodeos and admiring the bronc riders until he found out the hard way just how demanding that profession was. After an engineering degree, he joined the US Army and served as a Green Beret for thirty years, serving in Vietnam, South America, and Africa. In Vietnam he was a raider company commander for a cross-border operations unit. He retired from the army in the late nineties as a colonel and has been writing ever since.
Nicholson is a graduate of the National Defense University and instructed at the Command and General Staff School. He has his MBA from Pepperdine University and is a registered engineer and an enrolled agent for the IRS. He skis, scuba dives, and plays a fairly mean game of golf. He and his wife, Sandy, live in Colorado, close to the ski slopes and the grandkids.
Ann Noble received a BA in history and education from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and an MA in history from the University of Utah. She has published several historical works, including books about Pinedale, the Heart Mountain Japanese American Relocation Center, a biography of W. N. “Neil” McMurry, and numerous articles about Wyoming, Western, and women’s history.
Ms. Noble and her husband, David, own and operate a cattle ranch in Cora, Wyoming. They are the parents of four daughters who are the fifth generation on the ranch. Ms. Noble also is the owner of the historic Chambers House Bed and Breakfast in Pinedale.
Nancy Plain is Western Writers of America’s vice president (2016–18) and writes nonfiction for the young-adult reader. Her books on Western and frontier topics include biographies of the cowboy artist Charlie Russell, the Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph, the photographer Solomon Butcher, and the artist/ornithologist John James Audubon. Recognition for Nancy’s work includes four Spur Awards, a YALSA Finalist Award from the American Library Association, the Nebraska Book Award, the Will Rogers Medallion Award, a Booklist Editors’ Choice citation, and the National Outdoor Book Award. She joined Western Writers of America in 2008.
Novelist, writer, and book critic Clay Reynolds is the author of twenty published volumes and more than one thousand other publications ranging from short fiction to published recipes. A Spur Award winner for Western short fiction, he was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for his novel Franklin’s Crossing. His most recent novel is Vox Populi. A cook, not a chef, Clay loves the creative outlet preparing food affords. “Second to having people read your work, nothing beats having people eat and enjoy what you’ve prepared,” he says. He teaches writing and literature at the University of Texas at Dallas and lives in a small community, Lowry Crossing.
Lucia Robson wrote Ride the Wind while working as a public librarian in Maryland. It made the New York Times best-seller list in 1982, won a Western Writers of America Spur Award, and has been in print ever since. Her ninth book, Last Train from Cuernavaca, also was awarded a Spur. After nine historical novels, she wrote Devilish, a contemporary mystery with a supernatural twist. In 2016 she was inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame.
At one time, Vicky Rose considered attending chef school but realized she was more of a down-home, “put it on the supper table every night” type of cook, rather than a gourmet. Her writing has never been described as gravy, but she hopes it is just as nourishing to the soul as her food is to the stomach. All her heroines like to cook, and all her heroes like to eat. Bon appétit, or as they say in the Old West, “Come and git it!”
Hazel Rumney has worked in the publishing business for over thirty years, most of that as an editor. She has always loved books and reading and was the first in her family to have a library card. Her older brother gave her a Western to read when she was in her early teens. She has never stopped reading them, and Westerns have always been her favorite genre. Hazel attended Merced Community College in Merced, California, and started her publishing career at Thorndike Press in 1983. When she called her mother to tell her where she was working, her mother asked, “How much are you paying them to let you work there?” Along with Thorndike Press, she has also worked at Yankee Books, Cengage Learning, and Five Star Publishing.
A Montana ranch wife who works the calving barn in the wee hours of winter and the hay fields driving tractor in summer, Quackgrass Sally loves to write about the West, when she’s not out living it. She’s hitched her covered wagon and ridden her Pony Express horse over thousands of miles of historic Western trails. You’ll find her name on several Western film productions and museum interactive exhibits. A lifetime member of the National Pony Express Association, she’s even carried the Olympic Torch via horseback. Currently WWA Spur Awards Chair, Quackgrass believes that “every gal can be a legend in her own time . . . with a good horse!”
Michael N. Searles, known as Cowboy Mike, has spent his life in the field of education. He has taught at the middle school, high school, and university levels, always with the hope of broadening understanding and influencing lives. His love affair with the West has been motivated by the realization of two major factors: the importance of the West in shaping the American character, and the role of African Americans and other minorities in that formation. He, as a historian, accepts the challenge and mandate to pass on lessons learned in our great national Corps of American Discovery.
Dawn Senior-Trask grew up in the log cabin her family built in the foothills of Wyoming’s Snowy Range. No electricity or running water, and her mom cooked on a wood range and kept perishables in a cooler shaded by the bushy juniper outside their door. Meals have never tasted better! Her father was a published author, her sister and brother wrote poems and songs, and her mom wrote down the poems Dawn made up and told to her since age four. Now she’s working on a childhood memoir and cooking old recipes for her family!
Candace Simar is a Minnesota writer and poet. She has written the Spur Award–winning Abercrombie Trail Series, historical fiction about the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862. She also wrote Farm Girls and Shelterbelts. For more information, visit her website at www.candacesimar.com.
Brad Smith has been a member of the Western Writers of America since 2001. He has written twelve books about Arizona history and is a teacher at Cochise Elementary School. Brad and his wife, Audrey, reside in Cochise, Arizona.
Cotton Smith was born in Kansas City, Missouri; some would say a century later than he should have. He grew up enjoying both adjoining states, Kansas and Missouri, living mostly in Kansas. His ancestors fought in the Civil War, mostly for the South, as regulars and guerillas.
A gifted writer and thorough researcher, Cotton’s extensive communications skills were widely evident early in life, as was his interest in the West. A past president of the Western Writers of America, Cotton’s books garnered a Spur Award and the WWA Branding Iron Award. He has published twenty-one Western novels and cowrote three Western story anthologies. He is also the author of Trail to Eagle, a history of the early decades of Boy Scouting in Kansas City, and Tribesmen Arise!, the history of the Tribe of Mic-O-Say.
Krista Rolfzen Soukup is a literary publicist with over twenty-five years of experience in book promotion, marketing, and sales. As founder and owner of Blue Cottage Agency, she provides creative strategies and brand development for both new and experienced authors, as well as personalized guidance during every stage of book production, from prepublication through sales, advertising, and awards competitions. Through Blue Cottage Agency, Krista also promotes the literary arts as a whole, offering individuals and publishing companies a range of services that includes Web design and strategies for social media, publicity, and marketing. Krista speaks at regional and national writing conferences and participates in publishing and editing workshops. She also writes grants and organizes literary arts programs. In addition to holding a bachelor of science degree in business administration and marketing, Krista is a photographer who has been exhibited and published nationwide. She has been a member of Western Writers of America since 2013.
JoJo Thoreau started formulating stories when she was seven and published her first book, Bendy Wendy (2014), at age nine. She lives in a rural part of Maine and loves to visit schools to speak to other children about the magical world of reading and writing. When spending time at home, JoJo enjoys cuddling with her feline sidekicks, Boots and Trigger. Her second book, Buckaroo Bobbie Sue (2015), was awarded the WWA Spur Award. She’s a member of Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Learn more by visiting littlehandspress.org.
Susan Union is the author of the Randi Sterling Mystery Series. Her first book, Rode to Death, is set on a Southern California quarter horse breeding ranch and is available in paperback and in e-book format on Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks. The second in the series, Paws for Death, is also available in all e-book formats. Susan lives in Southern California with her family, her quarter horse mare, and her rescue dog, an Australian shepherd. To learn more about Susan, visit www.susanunion.com.
Neil Wetherington, or Montana Kid Hammer, a native Montanan, author, and educator, now resides in Fairbanks, Alaska. He enjoys a plethora of activities like shooting sports, American Civil War living history, and biblical studies. Retired military, Neil was educated at Hillsdale College and the Institute of Children’s Literature. His series, The Old West Adventures of Ornery and Slim, is published by Authorhouse Publishing. Neil is an NRA Certified Instructor and holds life memberships with the National Rifle Association, the Single Action Shooting Society, and the Golden Heart Shootist Society, and is a colonel in the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels.
Sandy Whiting resides along a Kansas section of the Chisholm Trail. Although no cattle currently tread outside the door, an occasional horse and rider will trek up the paved street, and there are buffalo grazing in a pen about a mile and a half away. Sandy’s first work of fiction appeared in Louis L’Amour Western Magazine. That story won the Spur Award for best short fiction. She has published several fiction stories as well as nonfiction articles.
G. R. Williamson is a historian, a Western writer, and a born storyteller. His publishing background includes three nonfiction books on the West, many magazine and newspaper articles, and several Western movie screenplays. Williamson’s new novel, T-Head Dead, is a crime novel set in present-day Corpus Christi. As a member of the Western Writers of America, he’s been on panel discussions discussing frontier gambling. He has appeared in a television documentary on famous feuds in the Old West. Williamson’s home is in Kerrville, Texas, where he lives with his wife and Chihuahua, Shooter.
Author R. G. Yoho was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and grew up on a cattle farm in southeastern Ohio. His love of Westerns began with the reading of Flint, a novel by famed Western author Louis L’Amour.
Along with his five traditional Westerns, R. G. recently published his first work of historical fiction, Return to Matewan, which takes place during the coal mine wars in West Virginia and Colorado in the early twentieth century. A loving husband, father, and grandfather, Yoho has been married to his wife, JoEllen, for almost thirty-five years.
Michael Zimmer is the author of seventeen novels. His work has been praised by Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Historical Novel Society, and others. City of Rocks (Five Star, 2012) was chosen by Booklist as a top 10 Western novel for 2012. The Poacher’s Daughter (Five Star, 2014) received a starred Booklist review and was awarded the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s prestigious Western Heritage Wrangler Award for Outstanding Western Novel (2015). He is a two-time finalist for the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and author of the American Legends Collection series. Zimmer resides in Utah with his wife, Vanessa, and their two dogs. Learn more by visiting his website at www.michael-zimmer.com.