Michael Wallis: Brought Life to Historic Route 66 and the Wild West

Born in 1945 in St. Louis, Missouri, Michael Wallis is a historian and biographer of the American West. A best-selling author and award-winning reporter, Wallis has written 10 best-sellers, including Route 66: The Mother Road; The Real Wild West: The 101 Ranch and the Creation of the American West; and Pretty Boy: The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd.

Wallis has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times and was also nominated for the National Book Award. He has won several other prestigious awards and honors, including the Oklahoma Center for the Book Lifetime Achievement Award Winner in 1999, as well as being named to the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame.

His work has been published in national and international magazines and newspapers, including Time, Life, People, Smithsonian, Texas Monthly, and The New York Times. He is a contributing editor for Oklahoma Today. In addition, Wallis appeared in the movie, Cars, as Sheriff in 2006. Since 1982, Wallis and his wife have made their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Scott Momaday: A Masterful Native American Historian

Native American writer Navarre Scott Momaday was born February 27, 1934, in Lawton, Oklahoma. He spent the first year of his life at his grandparents’ home on the Kiowa Indian Reservation. As he was growing up, he was exposed not only to the Kiowa traditions of his father's family, but to other Indian cultures of the Southwest. From early on, Momaday developed an interest in literature, especially poetry.

Momaday’s first novel House Made of Dawn, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, led to the mainstream breakthrough of Native American literature. He was also featured in the Ken Burns and Stephen Ives' documentary, The West, for his masterful retelling of Kiowa history and legend.

Momaday is also featured in another PBS documentary concerning the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a battle in which his grandfather fought. Also, Momaday is the Poet Laureate of Oklahoma.

His 1971 essay The American Land Ethic drew public attention to the tradition of respect for nature practiced by the native peoples. Some of his other well-known essays include Angle of Geese and Other Poems; The Names; and The Gourd Dancer.

Joy Harjo: Draws Inspiration from Her Native Roots

Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 9, 1951 and enrolled as a member of the Creek tribe. She has been known to say her Muscogee Creek heritage, tribal memories, survival skills, and love of nature all had a part in inspiring her to write unique poetry that "challenges the prevailing boundaries of southwestern writers."

 Harjo's published works include She Had Some Horses, In Mad Love and War, and The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. Her works have won numerous awards, including the Oklahoma Book Arts Award and the American Book Award. The talented Native American has released six major books containing her powerful works of poetry.

Besides writing poetry, Harjo plays the saxophone and was once in a band called Poetic Justice that combines music with her poetry. Throughout her career, she has sought to blend poetry with music, incorporating Native American tribal music, jazz, and rock. She has also many screen writing credits, including teleplays, public service announcements, and public broadcasting/educational television work.

S.E. Hinton: A Voice for Young Adults

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 22, 1948, Susan Eloise Hinton first started writing in her junior year at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa. She always enjoyed reading but wasn't satisfied with the literature being written for young adults, which influenced her to write her first novel, The Outsiders, published in 1967. The Outsiders became the second-best-selling young adult novel in publishing history, with more than eight million copies in print.

Hinton attended the University of Tulsa and earned her bachelor's degree in 1970. In 1988, she became the first person to receive the YASD/SLJ Author Achievement Award, which was given by the Young Adult Services Division of the American Library Association and School Library Journal.

After The Outsiders, her best-known books are Rumble Fish, Tex, and That Was Then, This Is Now. These four books were adapted into popular films.

Common themes within Hinton’s novels are juvenile delinquency, high school subcultures, teenage rebellion, and other issues that remain important to young adults today. All of the books are set in Tulsa and the surrounding area and have characters or places in common.

Ralph Ellison: His Insightful Words are a Lasting Legacy

African-American writer and teacher, Ralph Waldo Ellison, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on March 1, 1914. His parents, who had each grown up in the South to parents who were slaves, moved out west to Oklahoma, hoping the lives of their children would be fueled in the state known for freedom and opportunities.

From his birth, Ellison's parents knew he was bound for prosperity. His father even named him for the great writer Ralph Waldo Emerson in an effort to ensure such success.

Ellison did indeed achieve international fame with his first novel, Invisible Man (1952), which was awarded the National Book Award in 1953. From this point on, he followed a life of writing in which he earned many other awards, as well as teaching at various universities, including Rutgers and Yale. In addition to his writing talent, Ellison was an accomplished jazz trumpeter and a free-lance photographer.

Ellison died at the age of 80 on April 16, 1994, of pancreatic cancer, but he continues to be published today.

Louis L'Amour: Best-selling Frontier Novelist of All Time

The individual who would one day be known as Louis L'Amour, was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore on March 22, 1908. Growing up in the fading days of the American frontier, L'Amour was the last of seven children.

In 1923, when L'Amour was 15, he and his family moved from North Dakota to Oklahoma. It was at this time while working odd jobs, that young L'Amour met the wide variety of characters that would later become the inspiration for his writing - men such as Emmett Dalton of the notorious Dalton Gang.

In the 1930s, L'Amour took some creative writing courses at the University of Oklahoma, and started his career as a book reviewer. After writing some poetry and a series of short stories, L'Amour published his first novel, The Gift of Cochise, which was made into the John Wayne movie Hondo in 1953.

Thereafter, L'Amour consistently produced three novels a year until his death in 1988. He gained steady popularity throughout his career, to the point where hundreds of millions of copies of his books were sold in dozens of languages. L'Amour is the only author in history to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal in honor of his life's work.