Conger Beasley Jr. ( August 21,1940 – August 9, 2016 ) is among the absolute best practitioners of literary journalism and imaginative writing to have been born and raised in St. Joseph, Mo. He won the Western Writers of America Spur Award in Nonfiction for We Are a People of This World: The Lakota Sioux and the Massacre at Wounded Knee ( Arkansas University Press.) A modern masterpiece of literary reporting in the classic Beasley style—solid, narrative story telling, journalistic insight, and surrealist, linguistic dazzlement sufficient to turn reportage into a work of ecstatic art. Mr. Beasley won the Thorpe Menn Award for literary excellence for his essay collection Sundancers and River Deamons: Essays on Landscape and Ritual. He is the author of 19 + books, including the highly acclaimed Hidalgo’s Beard and The Ptomaine Kid, both regarded to be among the best innovative novels of the later 20th century. Recent books include Messiah: The Life and Times of Francis Schlatter and A Little Story about Maurice Ravel, an imaginative, fictional tale of the diminutive composer.

A world traveler, Beasley has written articles and books about the California’s Channel Islands, Colorado’s Spanish Peaks, Alaska, Venezuela, and has been seen on magazine covers hiking in the Andes in Peru. It is not possible to consider oneself an authentic resident of St. Joseph, or, for that matter, the entire state of Missouri, without having read this literary master.