Author Bio
Diana Allen Kouris
Historian and author Diana Allen Kouris was born into a cattle ranching family in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1949. She grew up in three states simultaneously. Her parents, Bill and Marie Allen, maintained a home in Rock Springs where Diana and her five siblings attended school. The family ranch lay a hundred miles south astride the famed Outlaw Trail in the valley of Brown's Park in a remote area where Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah converge.
Diana grew up absorbing the enchantment of the legendary valley of Brown's Park as it and its history encircled her and her cattle ranching family. From her earliest years in the saddle, she felt a deep sense of heritage and privilege to be a working cowgirl riding among her valley's remnants of history and within its ever-present essence of the Old West.
When Diana was a young wife and new mother, she was grief-stricken by her mother's death. During this time Diana formed a commitment to become a nonfiction writer so she could fulfill her mother's dream of writing the history of the valley so beloved by the family. That dream came true with the publication of the book The Romantic and Notorious History of Brown's Park. This book was the beginning of what became Diana's life-long work as a writer.
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Diana's second book is her memoir. Riding the Edge of an Era: Growing Up Cowboy on the Outlaw Trail is an extraordinary and poignant story that captures Diana's way of life cowboying with her family in a beautiful, rugged, and infamous country.
Her third book is a biography. Diana's decision to research and write the life story of Queen Ann Bassett, and of those who wove the fabric of Ann's life, arrived one morning as Diana stood in front of her desk looking at some old Brown's Park photos. She felt a profound awareness that Queen Ann was whispering to her. Diana recognized that the moment had come to devote all she could muster into seeking Queen Ann's truth and writing it as a work of merit. Years of intense researching, writing, and documenting led to the publication of the multi-award-winning book, Nighthawk Rising: A Biography of Accused Cattle Rustler Queen Ann Bassett of Brown's Park.
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In addition to her three books, Diana Allen Kouris is a contributing historian in the television documentary "Tom Horn: Grim Reaper of the Rockies." She has had her writing published in True West, the Outlaw Trail Journal, and Leaning Into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West. Honored for her contribution to history Diana appears as a "Landswoman" alongside Elinore Pruitt Stewart in the book Sweetwater Women.
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Diana and her husband Mike live in the central part of Wyoming in a serene area between the Wind River Mountains and Owl Creek Mountains. She continues her work writing stories of the past.
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aSpeaking Engagements:
Diana accepts speaking engagements for a fee. The speaking fee is negotiable. Please send a message using the Contact page.