John R. Erickson

John R. Erickson has written and published 75 books and more than 600 articles, and is best known as the author of the "Hank the Cowdog" series of books, audio-books, and stage plays.

John intended for the Hank stories to be read aloud, and one of the unique features of the series is that he has recorded all stories in the audio-book format, performing all the character voices himself and composing two original songs for each episode.

His stories have won a number of awards, including the Audie, Oppenheimer, Wrangler, and Lamplighter Awards, and have been translated into Spanish, Danish, Farsi, and Chinese.

The Hank the Cowdog series began as a self-publishing venture in his garage in 1982 and has endured to become one of the nation’s most popular series for children and families. Through the eyes of Hank the Cowdog, a smelly, smart-aleck Head of Ranch Security, Erickson gives readers a glimpse of daily life on a ranch in the West Texas Panhandle. USA Today calls the series "the best family entertainment in years.”

During the years 1974-1981, John worked as a ranch cowboy in Oklahoma and Texas. There, he found a balance between hard physical work and the intense, concentrated effort of writing four hours every day. He wrote novels, short stories, articles, plays, essays, and book reviews. When he sent them off to publishers, most came back with rejection slips.

In 1982, after fifteen years of failure and frustration, he and Kris started their own publishing company, Maverick Books, in their garage in Perryton, and brought out the first Hank the Cowdog book in 1983.

Today, more than 30 years after its modest beginnings, Maverick Books is once again Hank’s official publisher, and is still located in Erickson’s hometown of Perryton. Publishers Weekly calls the Hank the Cowdog series a "grassroots publishing phenomena,” and, to date, the series has sold over 9 million copies.

For more than thirty years, Erickson has worked hard to maintain the highest standards of good, wholesome family entertainment. In doing that, he has built a bond of trust with parents, librarians, and teachers, and all his stories have been approved for the Accelerated Reader Program. He has appeared in thousands of schools, from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Key West, Florida, and has been a popular speaker at conventions of teachers, librarians, and homeschoolers. And, in 2019, John was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.