Vonn McKee brings deep storytelling to the Western genre, rich with emotion and vivid pictures of a beautiful but unforgiving land and the hardy, spirited people who settled it. She often weaves real-life historical events into her writing, adding realism and intimacy to the characters and storylines.

Breaking into the Western writing scene in 2014 with “The Songbird of Seville,” a short story that was chosen as a Spur Award finalist by Western Writers of America, Vonn ‘s story “The Gunfighter’s Gift” was named a finalist for the Peacemaker Award for short fiction by Western Fictioneers the same year. “Wren’s Perch,” included in Five Star Publishing’s anthology, The Trading Post and Other Frontier Stories, was honored as a 2019 WWA Spur finalist.

Vonn grew up in the Red River Valley of Louisiana, where her mother’s family settled in the mid 1800s. She spent summers at the northwestern Minnesota ranch where her father grew up, picking up details about horses, cattle, and agriculture. Inspired by seeing her grandfather stretched out on a sofa reading Zane Grey novels (some of which were passed down to her), she owned a complete ZG set herself by age eighteen. Vonn loved hearing her grandmother relate stories of her childhood spent on the Dakota prairies, which were similar to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s accounts in the Little House series of books.

Vonn McKee now calls Tennessee home. Although her first love is writing short fiction (a collection of her work, Comanche Winter, was released in 2020 by Wolfpack Publishing), she is working on a historical novel.

Affiliations:

Western Writers of America