Susan Kalter 06/30/2013

Susan Kalter was born and raised in Ithaca New York, her father a professor at Cornell University, giving her a strong academic background. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Stanford University, and during her undergraduate years she assisted with a project about photographer Horace Poolaw, increasing her already-sparked interest in Native American history. She then went to University of California, San Diego for her master’s and PhD, where a faculty member gave her a copy of John Joseph Mathews’ book Wah'Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man’s Road, a gesture that would create ripples no one could have anticipated. After completing her PhD in 1999 and accepting a teaching position at Illinois State University, Kalter was ready to write an article about Mathews. In the next couple of years, not only did she complete the article but she also created a Native American Studies program at the university. Soon thereafter, she was asked to write a headnote for a Mathews anthology, and in her preparation for that, she learned of an unpublished Mathews autobiography that was receiving no attention whatsoever. She made this a priority project, and in her extensive research she discovered multiple unpublished short stories, drafts of the autobiography, diaries, and letters. Over the course of the next six years, Kalter compiled, edited, and wrote an introduction and notes to Twenty Thousand Mornings: An Autobiography of John Joseph Mathews which was published in 2012.