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For the last 29 years, Angelo State University has hosted a writer’s conference in honor of the late author and San Angelo native Elmer Kelton. The only problem is, ASU doesn’t seem to like Elmer Kelton, and the English department doesn’t know the definition of honor.​

Kelton is a seven-time Spur Award winner (not the six times the university inaccurately cited at the conference), a winner of four Western Heritage Awards, and was voted the best western author of all time by the Western Writers of America. He wrote 47 fiction novels, six short story collections, and 14 non-fiction books. Most of these he wrote part-time in the evenings. He was a WWII veteran, a graduate of the University of Texas, and worked for a collective 42 years at the San Angelo Standard-Times, Sheep and Goat Raiser Magazine, and as associate editor of Livestock Weekly. Most importantly, he was a husband, a father, and a churchman.​

That is certainly a career worth honoring.​

According to Daniel Kennedy, assistant professor of creative writing, to honor what would have been Kelton’s 100th birthday this year, the conference created the Elmer Kelton Award for Fiction and a second for Poetry. However, the award for fiction went to Pathikrit, a single-named nom de guerre, for his work “Twink Country, Bear County.” You can look up ‘twink’ and ‘bear’ on Urban Dictionary. It seems like an odd way to honor a man who would have nothing to do with any of that.​

The inaccurate facts about Kelton mentioned above, in an age when everyone has a computer in their pocket to look up information, also seem like an odd way to honor the man and his legacy. I simply googled his name and went to his website, where I found the awards he has received, the years he served as a journalist, and a list of his published books. It was sloppy not to get those details correct at a conference in his name.​

The final blow was the keynote speaker. Colson Whitehead is both politically incongruous with Kelton’s legacy and a poor fit in a conference honoring his name. He is a leftist from Manhattan who spent the entire conference cursing, explaining to the audience how everything was a metaphor for black oppression by whites in America, or joking about wanting to talk about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion rather than the craft of writing. It made a time of education and mentorship by an established author to aspiring ones look more like the comment section on Blue Sky.​

It’s a shame, because Whitehead has won many awards, including two Pulitzers, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and was an Oprah Book Club winner. From what I heard at his readings, he is a legitimately good writer. His prose was engaging. But the issue is about fit, rather than quality, and it would have been nice to hear him engage with more ideas about writing than skin color. I came away from the conference feeling both belittled and confused as to why Kelton’s name was on the program.​

I recognize that it is Sisyphean to expect a modern academic language arts department not to be part of the leftist agenda and progressive ideology. But why bother keeping up the charade that this whole exercise is to honor a man who has nothing in common with Whitehead, Pathikrit, or the ASU English Department other than that they sometimes put words on paper?​

ASU has lost touch with the namesake of their writer’s conference. By all means, have one, and invite any writer you want. Make it as anti-Western civilization as you want. Do whatever you want, but divorce it from Kelton’s name and legacy. Let those who actually like him honor him.

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