Bio of C. Brooks Kurtz

 

C. Brooks Kurtz is a columnist, novelist and editor. He began his published writing career when he started the student newspaper, The Spearhead, at Plainview High School in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where he served as editor for two years from 1991-1993 before graduating an too-average seventh in a class of 89, garnering Beta Club Man of the Year Honors, the only merit-based award he has ever received. For the epic underachiever, this one was appropriate considering his life-long love of Euclidean Geometry and the fact that his teacher, Mrs. Willis, was the best he ever had. From there, he spent his first year of higher education at The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where his underachievement continued and he was best known for starting the now-defunct Dr. Suess Club. While at CC, he also wrote the first of his many unpublished books, "The Ponzi Scheme." After one year, he transferred to Oklahoma City University, where he spent a miserable eight months and wrote another unpublished book, this one a little better than the last. Unfortunately, his apartment was broken into and the computer he wrote the book on was stolen and he was unable to recreate it. From there, he transferred to Oklahoma State University in The Happiest Place on Earth, Stillwater. He was a columnist and opinion editor for The Daily O'Collegian, the student newspaper 1995-97, his editorship coming in his final semester of school. After earning his Bachelor's degree in Journalism with an underachieving 3.16 GPA, he worked as a writer for the Steamboat Today in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and the Tulsa World.

Being C. Brooks Kurtz, he was also variously unemployed, under-employed as a temp, a waiter, a bartender, an inbound customer service representative for TV Guide and a technical writer. After leaving the Tulsa World, he returned to his beloved Stillwater in 2001 to pursue his Master's degree in Education, even though he was already a certified teacher and showed no interest in the field of education throughout his life. He also conceptualized and began writing a daily column at The Daily O'Collegian, first on Page 2 and then, after one semester, on Page 3, so far as could be found the first of its kind in college newspapers. This column would prove to be the seed for this site. He did this five days a week for seven semesters, even though his course work only took two semesters to complete. He neglected to write his thesis - "Conformity to National Technological Standards by Oklahoma Educators" - and did not receive his Master's degree. However, he did take advantage of his return to his first love - college - by studying courses as diverse as architecture, Medieval English and Greek mythology.

During this time, he also started the C. Brooks Wiener Factory, a hotdog pushcart business on the famed Stillwater Strip. The cart can still be found nightly outside Willie's Saloon, though as of Jan. 1, 2006, he no longer owns it.

In the fall of 2004, he moved to Guymon, Oklahoma in the barren Oklahoma Panhandle and bought 60-year-old "Bob's Place," a small beer joint with his best friend Chris Hitch. He took over as the editor of The Guymon Daily Herald on January 3, 2005. His stint in Guymon was, for the most part, a wholesale disaster. He lasted four long months at The Herald, sold out his share of Bob's four months later, and left the Oklahoma Panhandle for good. He did, however, become two things he'd never really been in his entire life while living with Hitch at the ranch: a beer drinker and a sun-worshiper. Miraculously, he remains good friends with Hitch.

Altogether, he has written seven books, had letters published in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, the former being the proudest moment of his writing life (not only was the mere fact that the ultra-liberal Vanity Fair published a letter from Kurtz, an arch-conservative, it was a letter that referred to Chelsea Clinton as a "Yankee Doodle Diva"), the latter being a dressing down of Louis Menand for his plain ignorance of the complete lack of diversity on liberal arts campuses.

Currently, he lives and works in southern Oklahoma. He has never been married, has no known children, and is working to ensure The Dear Leader is a One-Termer.