JOHN WOOLEY is the author, co-author, or editor of 22 books, including his current novel Ghost Band and the non-fiction From the Blue Devils to Red Dirt: The Colors of Oklahoma Music, one of only three books commissioned by the Oklahoma Centennial Commission and a finalist for the 2007 Oklahoma Book Award. Wooley's earlier horror-fantasy tale, Dark Within, was a finalist for the 2001 Oklahoma Book Award for Best Novel, and his first, Old Fears -- co-written with fellow newspaper writer Ron Wolfe -- was optioned by both Wes Craven and Paramount Pictures and is currently under option with former Paramount vice-president Brian Witten. Other recent works include the Rogers State University centennial book, 100 Years on the Hill and Starmaker, written with country-music impresario Jim Halsey.

         Wooley has just completed Shot in Oklahoma, a history of made-in-Oklahoma movies for the University of Oklahoma Press, and a book about Craven, titled Wes Craven: A Man and His Nightmares, for John Wiley and Sons in New York. Current projects include a history of the Cain's Ballroom, as-told-to biographies of famed Osage rancher John Hughes and Will Rogers' grandniece Coke Meyer, and the play Time Changes Everything, a story of two imaginary meetings between Oklahoma music icons Bob Wills and Woody Guthrie. Written with Thomas Conner and featuring the Red Dirt Rangers, Time Changes Everything has been staged at SummerStage in Tulsa, OK Mozart in Bartlesville, and in Muskogee and Woodward.

         Wooley also penned the script for the made-for-TV movie Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, the award-winning independent film Cafe Purgatory, and the recent documentary Bill Boyce - Money Actor, along with writing comic books (including the Plan Nine from Outer Space graphic novel), trading cards, and thousands of magazine and newspaper stories, most of them in conjunction with his work as the music and horror-movie writer for the Tulsa World, a position he held from 1983 through most of 2006. From the early '80s to 2009, he wrote well over 100 pieces for the horror-movie magazine Fangoria. He is currently a contributing editor and columnist for Oklahoma Magazine and an adjunct lecturer in the American Studies Program at OSU-Tulsa, teaching classes on horror movies and Oklahoma music and films.

         He is also the producer and host of the highly rated Swing on This, Tulsa's only western-swing radio program, heard every Saturday night on NPR affiliate KWGS (89.5 FM).

         Wooley was chosen to write Roy Clark's coffee-table-style tour book, celebrating his 60 years in show business, and to emcee the Will Rogers Rotary Club's "Good Ride, Cowboy" event, honoring Garth Brooks - where Brooks told the crowd, "you might not know it, but John Wooley is a star."
         As a result of his efforts on behalf of his state's music and musical figures, Wooley became, in 2003, the first - and so far only - writer to be inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. In 2009, he was also an inductee into both the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame, the latter for his comic-book writing.