I Come From Cowboys and Indians

by Ron Wallace

Centered in the plains of Oklahoma, this powerful collection of poetry by Ron Wallace invites us to his country where red-tailed hawks circle a landscape made real by the grace of his writing, writing that comes from his soul. ....................................... Billie Letts New York Times best-selling author of Where the Heart Is and her newest work Made in the USA, winner of the Walker Percy and the Oklahoma Book Awards.

95 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

Ron Wallace was born December 17th, 1953 in Durant, Oklahoma. He grew up and still lives there with his wife and college sweetheart, Jane. They have one son, Matthew who is currently attending Southeastern Oklahoma State University where Ron graduated with a B.A. in 1977 and an M.A. in 1983. Wallace taught English, Humanities, American History, and coached baseball in Colbert, Oklahoma (a small public school on the Red River) for thirty years moving away from the writing he had been doing in college. He is of Native American (Choctaw, Cherokee and Osage) and Scots Irish ancestry tracing his roots out of Georgia and Arkansas into Oklahoma.
He began to revive his writing in the 90’s and started attempting some publishing as that decade closed. His work has appeared in Insight, Poetic Voices, Loch Raven Review, Scorched Earth Publishing and Grandmother Earth XIV just to name a few publications. In 2004 and 2005 he won several contests and was awarded a chance to publish a book at emergingpoets.net a website sponsored at that time by Jim Furber of TJMF Publishing. The result was Wallace’s first book, Native Son (American Poems From the Heart of Oklahoma), which became a finalist in the 2007 Oklahoma Book Awards. He saw his work translated and published in the January 2007 issue of the Romanian Literary Magazine, Convorbiri Literare by the noted Romanian poet Vasile Baghiu in December of 2006.
In February of 2007 Wallace appeared as part of the emergingpoets.net Southern Tour with one of the current sponsors of the site Maggie Wilkie and Tina Collins-Eib, Lynn Doiron, Sherry Thrasher and featured poet, Leo Briones. In March of 2007 he appeared as the featured poet at the Abydos Learning International Trainers Conference in Houston. In May he was the featured poet in Scorched Earth Publishing e-zine at www.scorchedearthpublishing.com, and in September he won second place in the 2007 Grandmother Earth National Environmental Poetry Writing Awards.
In 2007 his second book based on his love of American History was released. Smoke and Stone (The Voices of Gettysburg) is a poetic account of the Battle of Gettysburg from different points of view of both real and fictional participants in this turning point of the Civil War.
Wallace's third book of Oklahoma poetry, I Come from Cowboys ... and Indians, was released in October of 2008 and won the 2009 Oklahoma Writer's Federation Best Book of Poetry Award.
His fourth volume of poetry, Oklahoma Cantos, was released in September 2010 and was a finalist in the 2011 Oklahoma Book Awards and won the 2011 Oklahoma Writer's Federation Best Book of Poetry Award.