About Connie C. Wilson
Award winning author, Connie Corcoran Wilson (MS + 30) graduated from the University of Iowa and Western Illinois University, with additional study at Northern Illinois, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago. She taught writing at six Iowa/Illinois colleges and has written for five newspapers and seven blogs, including Yahoo, which named her its 2008 Content Producer of the Year. She is a member of ITW (International Thriller Writers), where she is a writer for their online newsletter, and a member of IWPA (Illinois Women’s Press Association, Chicago chapter), which awarded her its Silver Feather Award in 2012 and 2014, MWA (Midwest Writers Association), AWP (American Writing Program) and MWC (Midwest Writing Center), which named her its Writer of the Year in 2010. She has won numerous E-Lit awards, a NABE Pinnacle award, an ALMA (American Literary Merit Award), Lucky Cinda competition and two IWPA Silver Feather Awards (2012, 2014). Connie’s third book in “The Color of Evil” series, ‘Khaki=Killer’ was just named a Page-turner of the Year 2014 by “Shelf Unbound” and Writer’s Digest magazine in its December/January 2014-2015 issue!
She currently maintains her own blog, www.WeeklyWilson.com.
She received the pinnacle award and a Shelf Unbound award as a “page-turner of 2013” for RED IS FOR RAGE. THE COLOR OF EVIL was the front-runner in the YA category for the Bram Stoker award (in recommendations received) for all of 2013. Connie’s first book, TRAINING THE TEACHER AS A CHAMPION, was written for Performance Learning Systems, Inc. in 1989, while she was working as an educational writer for that company, the nation’s largest teacher training firm.
A graduate of the University of Iowa, Berkeley, Western Illinois University, Northern Illinois University and the University of Chicago with a Master’s plus 30 hours in English, Journalism and Education, she was Film and Book Critic for the Quad City Times (Davenport, IA during the 70’s and 80’s and has also written for the (Moline, IL) Dispatch and 4 other papers. Her (Jan., 2011) nonfiction release It Came from the ‘70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now consisting of 50 reviews written during the seventies, with 76 photos, major cast and interactive trivia, drew heavily on her years as a Film Critic, and she has continued to review Film Festivals for Yahoo.
Connie’s continuing short story collection, Hellfire & Damnation (www.HellfireAndDamnationTheBook.com) , stories illustrating each of the 9 Circles of Hell described in Dante’s Inferno, will soon have a third installment. Her screenplay based on her 2008 collaborative novel Out of Time was a winner in the 2007 “Writer’s Digest” competition. She has also written 3 volumes of folk tales/ghost stories, collected while traveling Route 66. (Ghostly Tales of Route 6: Vol. I, II and III, www.GhostlyTalesofRoute66.com.) She also has 2 entries in an illustrated children’s book series, written for her 5-year-old granddaughters (Ava and Elise), entitled the Christmas Cats series. (www.TheXmasCats.com).
In addition to interviewing Kurt Vonnegut, William F. Nolan, David Morrell, Joe Hill, Frederik Pohl, Jon Land, John Irving, Valerie Plame and Anne Perry for print and online publications, Connie taught for 33 years, founded and was CEO of 2 businesses (Sylvan Learning Center #3301 and Prometric Testing Center #3301), has a son (Scott) and a daughter (Stacey) born 19 years apart, and is married 46 years to husband, Craig. Her twin granddaughters, Ava and Elise, who appear on the cover of her humorous book of essays, Laughing through Life, turned five on January 11, 2014.
She lives in Chicago and in the IA/IL Quad Cities.
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