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John Allen Small was born in Oklahoma City in 1963, lived in Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony), then returned to his native state in 1991 in the hopes of dragging some of its more conservative residents kicking and screaming into the 20th century before the dawning of the 21st. He realized the hopelessness of this quest, but has yet to completely abandon all hope...

His newspaper work, both as columnist and as reporter, has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association and the Oklahoma Education Association. He began writing his weekly column, "Small Talk," in 1988 while he was a student at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and earned several awards from the Illinois College Press Association. Upon his return to Oklahoma in 1991, the column quickly became a popular fixture in the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, where he currently works as News Editor; a radio version of "Small Talk" was honored as "Best Radio Commentary" by the Oklahoma Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in February of 1998. He was named to the Oklahoma Press Association’s Quarter Century Club in 2005, in recognition of a newspaper career that began when he was a newspaper delivery boy for the Chicago Tribune in the 1970s.

In addition to the recognition accorded his newspaper and radio work, he earned writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He has also written a stage play, "The Spinning Of The World"; self-published a cookbook, a volume of poetry and several western stories; served as project editor on a book entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor," concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; and was a contributor to the 2005 anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe." That particular project was an outgrowth of his membership in the New Wold Newton Meteoric Society, an organization devoted to the study of creative mythology, which has resulted his writing several other related articles which have appeared on the Internet. A lifelong fan of the Kingston Trio and the Chieftains, he has been known to throw heavy objects at people who say they don’t like the sound of the banjo or bagpipes.

Mr. Small married his high school sweetheart, the former Melissa Ulrich, in 1986. They have two sons, Joshua Orrin (b. 1991) and William Ian (b. 1996).

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