News Release

Contact:
Daniel F. Littlefield
501-569-8336
501-569-8185 (FAX)
dflittlefiel@ualr.edu

Author Robert J. Conley Donates Papers to SRC

Author Robert J. Conley

UALR, June 27, 2005. Well-known Cherokee novelist and historian Robert J. Conley has donated his papers to the Sequoyah Research Center (SRC). SRC Director Daniel Littlefield and Associate Director Robert Sanderson received the first group of papers at Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in April. The papers consist of manuscripts of works, research notes, correspondence, and career memorabilia. Conley is preparing a second group of papers for transfer to the SRC.

An enrolled member of the United Band of Ketoowah Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, Conley lives at Tahlequah. A native of Cushing, Oklahoma, he completed high school in Wichita Falls, Texas, where he attended Midwestern University, receiving both a bachelor's degree in drama (1966) and a master's in English (1968). He has been an Associate Professor of English at Morningside College and an Instructor of English at Southwest Missouri State University and at Northern Illinois University and has served as Assistant Programs Manager for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Director of Indian Studies at Eastern Montana College, Bacone College, and Morningside College. Conley left Morningside College and returned to Tahlequah, where, for nearly twenty years, he has written full time.

Conley’s writing is varied and extensive. His poems and short stories have been widely published in periodicals and anthologies in this country and abroad, and his works have appeared in numerous languages. His first novel, Back to Malachi, was published in 1986. Since that time he has published thirty-four novels, a collection of short stories, several reprints in the U. S. and abroad, and four books recorded on tape. He also wrote the novel version of a screenplay, Geronimo: An American Legend. His latest work, a history of the Cherokee Nation, was recently released by the University of New Mexico Press. Conley is a member of the Western Writers of America and has won Spur awards for his novels Nickajack and The Dark Island and for his short story Yellow Bird: An Imaginary Autobiography, which appeared in The Witch of Goingsnake. In 1997 Conley was inducted into the Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of Fame.

Conley will speak on the UALR campus during the afternoon of October 20 as part of the annual Sequoyah Research Center Symposium. Meanwhile, to find out more about Conley and his work, visit his website at http://www.hanksville.org.

Photograph credit: http://www.hanksville.org.