Connie Cronley

Connie Cronley has published three books of essays and co-authored a memoir with the late Edward Perkins, a career Foreign Service officer and the first Black U.S. ambassador assigned to apartheid South Africa. Her newest book is "A Life on Fire: Oklahoma's Kate Barnard," named by the Oklahoma Historical Society as the best history book of the year. Barnard was a fiery politician and social reformer in the early 1900s and a champion for children. She famously said, "How can women wear diamonds when babies cry for bread."

Cronley lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where is is a magazine columnist, television book reviewers and commentator of public radio.

She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.