Clancy Carlile

Carlile was born in the Choctaw Nation's tribal jurisdictional area in Oklahoma, and his father was Cherokee. He had an erratic childhood,[2] and moved to Texas at a young age. Carlile was a high school drop-out.[3] He worked as a cotton picker until his family moved to California to pick fruit. He served in the army during the Korean War and after being discharged, obtained a master's degree at San Francisco State University.[4]

Carlile began writing, and penned his first novel, presumably As I Was Young and Easy (1958) in just 17 days. This was followed by Spore 7 (1979). In Honkytonk Man (1980), the tale of the life and death of a country singer which was made into a film by Clint Eastwood in which Eastwood also starred,[4] Carlile wrote both the novel and the screenplay.[5] His final novel, Children of the Dust (1995), about the settling of Oklahoma, was made into a CBS mini-series featuring Sidney Poitier. This novel is related to the author's heritage, being from the Oklahoma Territory. The story is set in the late 1880s, with Gypsy Smith (Poitier) being a gunslinger of African American and Cherokee descent who helps African American homesteaders settle the territory under the specter of white people. The novel, The Paris Pilgrims, regarding a mix of memoirs, biographies and fiction[6] of famous American expatriates in 1920s Paris,[3] was published posthumously in 1999.

Carlile spent much of his later life in Austin, Texas where he had a writing fellowship at the University of Texas.[3] Carlile had at least one child, a son, Steven, and four grandchildren.[4] He died in Austin from cancer at the age of 68 on June 4, 1998.[4]