John Oliver Killens (1/14/1916-10/27/1987) was an American fiction writer from Georgia. His novels, plays, short stories, essays, and articles featured elements of African-American life, drawing on tales from his great-grandmother’s time as a slave as well as traditional black mythology and folklore. He attended the Ballard Normal School in Macon, Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Robert H. Terrell Law School also in D.C. Before his final year of law school, Killens left in order to study creative writing at Columbia University in New York. After a brief stint in the United States Army, he moved to New York city to establish a literary career. He co-founded what became the Harlem Writers Guild, wrote several novels, and was published in a range of media, including The Black Scholar, The New York Times, Ebony, Redbook, Negro Digest, and Black World. Killens also taught creative-writing programs at Fisk University, Howard University, Columbia University, and Medgar Evers College, where he founded the National Black Writers Conference in 1986.
John Oliver Killens
Studios
Mixter
John Oliver Killens worked in the Mixter studio.
Built in 1927–1930, the Florence Kilpatrick Mixter Studio was funded by its namesake and designed by the architect F. Winsor, Jr., who also designed MacDowell's original Savidge Library in 1925. Mixter Studio, solidly built of yellow and grey-hued granite, once had sweeping views of Pack Monadnock to the east. The lush forest has now grown…