Scott Conroe

Most of my life, I have been a professional writer. I started writing in fifth grade and never stopped. Growing up in Northern New York, I was allowed only a short time each night for watching TV; we were supposed to be reading, and in high school I had three books going at once, one in school and two at home (upstairs, downstairs).

I spent 22 years in newspapers as writer and photographer, for small dailies and a medium-sized daily in Syracuse, NY, covering sports, education and police/courts. Mixed in with those years were two years in college public relations, and nine years of teaching journalism and writing at Cornell University.

My first three books were about sports: 'Stoners' (1990), about my high school's undefeated 1971 football team; 'Massena Stories' (1992), about a blue-collar town near mine where sports ruled; and 'Make It Happen,' the story of NCAA wrestling champion Mitch Clark of Ohio State.

In 2007, I founded Box Grove Communications and used it to publish my fourth non-fiction book, 'I Take Just Pride: How a Fraternity Reinvented Itself, Why a Professor Joined.' This story blends my efforts to understand what a college fraternity was, and how to advise one at Cornell, with history and social context. I failed to get into a fraternity at St. Lawrence University, but became an advisor to this one and was initiated in 2001, the night before I turned 46. I remain an advisor of this remarkable chapter of Phi Kappa Tau.

Now I am writing a YA novel with story lines now and in 1972. I might self-publish again, this time as an e-book and POD, using new techniques to reach readers -- like this Amazon site.