Jack Conroy
| Jack Conroy | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Wesley Conroy December 5, 1899 Monkey Nest, a coal mining camp near Moberly, Missouri |
| Died | February 28, 1990 (aged 90) Moberly, Missouri |
| Pen name | Jack Conroy, Tim Brennan, John Norcross |
| Occupation | writer |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Ethnicity | Irish-American |
| Citizenship | American |
| Period | 1933-1990 |
| Genre | proletarian literature |
| Notable works | The Disinherited (1933) |
| Notable awards | Guggenheim Fellowship, State of Illinois Literary Times Award, NEA artist’s grant, Society of Midland Authors Lifetime Achievement Award, Society for Midwestern Literature’s Mark Twain Award |
John Wesley Conroy (December 5, 1899 - February 28, 1990) was a leftist American writer, also known as a Worker-Writer, best known for his contributions to “proletarian literature,” fiction and nonfiction about the life of American workers during the early decades of the 20th century.
He was born John Wesley Conroy to Irish immigrants on December 5, 1898, in the coal mining camp of Monkey Nest near Moberly, Missouri. A Depression-era novelist, Conroy drew upon his childhood growing up in a mining camp and elements of this can be seen in his novels, The Disinherited and A World to Win.
Though he did not complete a formal education, Conroy worked at various jobs including: railroad shop apprentice (and eventual foreman), recording secretary for the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America union office, an auto factory worker, and construction. While he worked, he wrote, and it is said that in 1934, when soaring temperatures had burned up crops and blistered city streets, Conroy moved his kitchen table outdoors beneath a shade tree where he created his second novel, A World to Win.
From 1931 to 1941 Conroy edited successively the magazines Rebel Poet, The Anvil, and The New Anvil. He included works by Erskine Caldwell, Langston Hughes, and William Carlos Williams, among others. Conroy later edited, with Curt Johnson, a collection of these pieces, Writers in Revolt: The Anvil Anthology (1973). In 1938 Conroy came to Chicago, on Algren's suggestions, to work on the Illinois Writers' Project. Along with recording folktales and industrial folklore, Conroy was assigned to the black history portion of the IWP, and collaborated with Arna Bontemps, producing the pioneering black studies works They Seek A City (1945) and Anyplace But Here (1965), both about African-American migration from the South to the North. Conroy and Bontemps also collaborated on several successful juvenile books based on folktales, including The Fast Sooner Hound (1942) and Slappy Hooper, The Wonderful Sign Painter (1946).
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