About Kendall

Kendall McCook, storyteller and poet, was born in 1945 in Clayton, New Mexico. Both grandfathers were homesteaders and stock farmers. McCook’s father, Clay Hamilton, and his mother Tony Schaffer, were raised on the homesteads, one in Union County, New Mexico, the other in Donley County, Texas.

Much of McCook’s work as a writer and performer involves the stories of his family, but McCook also writes of the human condition as well as the land in turn-of-the-twentieth-century America.

After teaching school from 1967 until 1982, McCook farmed and wrote stories about the people he grew up around. His first book, This Land, was published at Eakin Press, Austin, in 1984. This collection of short stories captured movement of his people from cotton sharecropping to homestead days in Union County, New Mexico. McCook’s second collection of stories was titled What Price Paradise and captures the conflicts of his people as they moved to cities and towns.

In 1987, McCook also produced a play called “I Wish You Well” about a farmer and Socialist from near Stephenville, Texas. A second play, in 1995, called “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You” is set in the last of the farm and ranch era of Clayton, New Mexico in 1979.

McCook has published one novella, En Placitas and a short story called White Settlement, both in 1996. In addition, he has written an unpublished journal of his organic farm experiences from 1998 – 2002.

He continues to write in periodic columns and performs at various revenues including a July 2008 event at the Santa Fe Brew Company.

For more than 20 years, he has worked with Santa Fe poet Kell Robertson, and he has published and edited two literary journals with Robertson – called Desperado, in 1995 and 2002.

Kendall currently lives in Ft. Worth, TX, and is married with two children, Clayton, and Jake. He is available for speaking and reading engagements. Contact him at kcmccook@yahoo.com.

“A working man’s writer.” – Santa Fe Reporter

“McCook is part of Thoreau’s great search, and to ignore what he is looking and working for is to deny the best part of ourselves.” – ‘Hard Road to Hoe’ Reviews from Rural America

“He writes about what many of us have lost, as we remove ourselves from the land and its magic.” – Dallas Morning News

Bibliography

Short Story Collections

This Land, Eakin Press, Austin, TX, 1984

What Price Paradise, Lattitudes Press, 1988

Plays:

“I Wish You Well” – 1988

“I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You” – 1995

Story books

En Placitas, Desperado Press, 1996

White Settlement, Desperado Press, 1996