Nebraska Authors

Dorothy was the sixth of ten children to Willard and Augusta Dodge Thomas. When Dorothy was seven, the family moved to Alberta, Canada, where they homesteaded near a logging company, often providing food and shelter to the loggers. The family moved back to Kansas when Dorothy was 12, and she attended school for the first time. A bright child, Dorothy showed immediate aptitude in writing stories and creating artwork, but always struggled with her other schoolwork. Other members of the Thomas family, especially Dorothy’s sister Kennetha, share Dorothy’s artistic strengths. Dorothy's mother Augusta moved her family to Bethany, Nebraska in 1914. Dorothy recieved her teaching certificate in 1918 and taught school throughout Nebraska for the next nine years. Her literary start came in Nebraska with the publication of one of her first stories in Prairie Schooner. Dorothy’s first publication was a poem entitled “The Beast Room,” which appeared in a 1927 issue. Selling her story “The Blue Doves” to Scribners in 1928 gave Dorothy the confidence to return her 1929 teaching contract unsigned: “sink or swim, I would risk everything, work at whatever jobs I could get, and write for my life and my living.”

The Heritage Room is the repository for Dorothy Thomas's literary estate. Complete description at Heritage Room Archives.

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He had an interesting and somewhat improvisational career. He began his career painting cattle portraits for proud farmers and stock breeders. In about 1897 he joined the Campbell Brother's Circus, a large, nationally known circus which had winter quarters in Fairbury, Nebraska. There, for a decade, he painted circus posters, circus wagons and also worked as a clown. He left the circus in 1907 and settled in Lincoln, Nebraska. He painted backgrounds for Vaudeville, and many theatrical backdrops in Lincoln and around the region. He painted murals for public buildings and churches.

Among his best known murals was a panoramic view of the United States stretching around the walls of an auto dealership at 14th and Q Streets in Lincoln. In the 1930s Manrose, working for the Works Progress Administration, painted portraits of Lincoln's public libraries. In 1981 this artwork was restored by local artist Lynn Boyer and hung in the libraries and library offices. The largest of these, a 2-by-3 1/2-foot portrait of the main city library built in 1902 and demolished in 1961 shows the library as it was known to Lincoln residents like Loren Eiseley and Mari Sandoz. It still hangs near the library offices. In the 1950s, just before he died in 1957, Manrose painted backgrounds for display windows at Ben Simon's and Hovland-Swanson's department stores in Lincoln.

Manrose is listed in Susan V. Craig, Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (active before 1945). 2009.

Nebraska Author Gertrude Campbell Wehling contributed to a history of the Campbell Circus: see Ed Bardy, Tales from a tent : story of the Campbell Bros. Circus : the canvas that covered the plains. 1981. In HR

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Starita has two Pulitzer Prize nominations, one for investigative reporting with the Miami Herald, the other for his book, The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge, 1995. Dull Knifes was a Book of the Month Club, History Book Club and Quality Paperback selection and has been translated into six foreign languages. Starita had a distinguished 12 year career with the Miami Herald, which including local and investigative reporting as well as serving as that newspaper's New York bureau chief from 1983 to 1987. He has served as City Editor for the Lincoln Journal Star, and is currently professor of journalism at UNL. He has received numerous awards for both his journalism and his books on Native Americans.

Asked about influences, Starita has cited a period of extensive travel and varied work after he left school in the early 1970s, and the practice of journalism, which he says "forces you to be able to organize and present information in a coherent and readable package--often under field deadline pressure." He also cites the literary influences of writers: "Mark Twain (because he could tell a good story with a powerful message as well as anyone)--Willa Cather (because she understood the powerful relationship between the land and the people of the midwest)--and Wallace Stegner (because he conveyed the great subtlety and beauty of the Great Plains better than anyone)."

Starita's 2009 book I Am a Man: Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice, was the 2011 One Book One Lincoln selection and the One Book One Nebraska selection for 2012.

See also other recent authors with interest in Native Americans: Alan Boye, Stew Magnuson, David Wishart, and John R. Wunder.

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