John R. Powers
Born: November 30, 1945 in Chicago, Illinois
Died: 2013 in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin Pen Name: None Connection to Illinois: Powers was born in Chicago and lived there most of his life. He attended Brother Rice High School and Northwestern and Loyola Universities. He also taught at Northeastern. Biography: John Powers was a novelist and a renowned motivational speaker. He bagan his career as an elementary and junior high school teacher. His work, ''Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?'' was selected for inclusion on the list of Best Books for Young Adults in 1975 and went on to become a hit musical. Powers produced the Chicago show full-time, as well as other productions of the play in other major cities. Powers has also produced and starred in a one-man show called ''Life’s Not Fair . . . So What?'' Powers holds a Ph.D. in Communications from Northwestern University and was a professor of speech and performing arts at Northeastern Illinois University. During this time, he also created and hosted a number of specials for Chicago public television. He received undergraduate degrees in sociology from Loyola University and is a graduate of Brother Rice High School in Chicago.
Awards:
- American Library Association's list of Best Books for Young Adults in 1975 for ''Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?''
Website: http://www.johnpowers.com
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Powers
John R. Powers on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=john+r.++powers
Selected Titles
 |
Do black patent leather shoes really reflect up? ISBN: 0573681031 OCLC: 17683964 S. French, New York : ©1988. |
 |
Do black patent leather shoes really reflect up? / ISBN: 0829421432 OCLC: 57349353 Loyola Press, Chicago, Ill. : ©2005. Presents a fictionalized memoir of high school student Eddie Ryan, and describes the struggles he and his friends endure while attending a Catholic school in Chicago during the 1960s. |
 |
Odditude : ISBN: 9780757305757 OCLC: 78774601 Health Communications, Deerfield Beach, Fla. : ©2007. |
 |
The junk-drawer corner-store front-porch blues / ISBN: 0451176022 OCLC: 28235764 Signet, New York, N.Y. : 1993, ©1992. |
| The last Catholic in America ISBN: 1556903014 OCLC: 22583552 Recorded Books, Clinton, MD : â„—1983, ©1973. Now grown, Eddie Ryan revisits St. Sebastien's Catholic School, where he spent eight years and where the world consisted of two religions --- Catholic and public ... |
|
 |
The last Catholic in America / ISBN: 0829421300 OCLC: 57549801 Loyola Press, Chicago : [2005], ©1973. |
 |
The unoriginal sinner and the ice-cream God ISBN: 9780829424294 OCLC: 68416633 Loyola Press, Chicago : ©2006. |