Frederick Manfred (1912–94) grew up on a farm in Iowa with six brothers, attended Calvin College in Michigan, and then hitchhiked for two years across America, which provided him with rich materials for his writing. His twenty-five novels include the five-volume series The Buckskin Man Tales, of which Lord Grizzly and Scarlet Plume are also available in Bison Books editions. Manfred also published volumes of poetry, short stories, and essays. Delbert E. Wylder (1923–2004) was one of the founding members of the Western Literature Association and is the author of Popular Westerns and Emerson Hough. Charles L. Woodard is a distinguished professor of English at South Dakota State University and the author of Peril and Promise: Essays on Community in South Dakota and Beyond.