Kevin Corley

While teaching history in Christian County, Illinois to many of the descendants of the coal mine wars, historian Kevin Corley mined the rich archives of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum to portray the lives of mining families during these turbulent times.

After retiring from a career in education, Kevin Corley turned to his lifelong love of writing, using it to bring to life the stories he had once shared with history students in his classroom. He became particularly interested in the coal-mining communities of Illinois and the pivotal role they played in the rise of organized labor during the first half of the twentieth century.

From the Virden and Pana massacres of 1898–99 to the migration of miners following the Cherry Mine disaster of 1909, Christian County emerged as an important center of the union movement.

While teaching history to many descendants of those who had lived through the coal mine wars, Corley developed a deep connection to the lives and experiences of working people. That connection grew stronger in 1986, when he was selected to conduct oral-history interviews with men and women who had experienced these powerful and often terrifying events firsthand. His research was later used by the late Carl Oblinger in writing Divided Kingdom, published in 1991.

Hard Ball Press published Corley’s first novel, Sixteen Tons, in 2014, followed by Throw Out the Water in 2016. Matewan Blood & Coal is Corley’s eighth published novel.

In 2017, Corley retired to his hometown of Shelbyville, Illinois.

He can be reached at sixteentons@yahoo.com.