The Desert Nights, Rising Stars
Writers Conference

Mike Conklin is a career journalist, whose feature, news and daily column writing was familiar to Chicago Tribune readers for three-plus decades. His assignments were local, national and international, often appearing in Tribune Syndication distributed to over 300 newspapers. Other work appeared in the New York Times, Encyclopedia of Chicago, Encyclopedia of American Journalism, History Magazine, textbooks, and a variety of other publications. 

Conklin left The Tribune to join the full-time faculty at DePaul University, where he taught, served as student newspaper advisor, and helped found the school’s Journalism Department. He also taught communication at Xiamen University in China and writing as an adjunct at Cornell College (Ia.), Lake Forest College (Ill.), and University of Illinois-Chicago. Other projects have included editing, writing, and contributing to five nonfiction books, publishing two fiction novels, and peer reviewing for Northwestern University Press. Currently he is working on a nonfiction Dust Bowl novel. Conklin lives in Arizona in the winter, where he teaches writing and consults as a volunteer in the Scottsdale Public Library and Phoenix Public School systems.