About Tales Press
After establishing a cultural journalism project in southeastern Illinois called Tales from the General Store and publishing a periodic magazine of historical features about the general store era of the early 20th century for more than 10 years, educator, writer and editor Ray Elliott started an offshoot publishing company in 1998 called Tales Press.
Its purpose is to continue and to extend the original project's mission of preserving the history and culture of the Midwest by publishing non-fiction memoirs and works of fiction that document and reveal something meaningful and worthwhile about the human condition.
About Publisher/Writer Ray Elliott
Author and publisher Ray Elliott grew up in a small Southern Illinois town and longed to
see the world. He’s worked on farms and in oilfields, served in the Marine Corps, been a
prison counselor, and was a high school and college English and journalism educator in
American public high schools and universities for more than 25 years. He’s done many
things and visited many places, but his passion has been constant: to tell stories that
touch people’s lives and truthfully explore the effects of war, the power of family and the
resiliency of the human spirit.
During his enlistment in the Marine Corps, Ray served in the infantry with Charlie
Company, First Battalion, Seventh Regiment, First Marine Division at Camp Pendleton,
Calif., as a brig guard and turnkey in the guard company at Sangley Point, Luzon,
Republic of the Philippines, and in the artillery with India Company, Third Battalion,
Tenth Regiment, Second Marine Division at Camp Lejuene, N.C.
He is an editor, newspaper columnist and author of “Wild Hands Toward the
Sky,” “Iwo Blasted Again,” “With the Silent Knowledge” and numerous works of
nonfiction. The strong interviewing skills and frank observations of human actions and
motivations Ray has gained through his life experiences are reflected in his writing.
After retiring from the classroom temporarily in 1999 to write full time, he later
edited the alumni publication and taught journalism at what is now the University of
Illinois College of Media. In 2013, Ray served as the military advisor on the Tim Rice
and Lee Menzies original London production of “From Here To Eternity: The Musical,”
based on the classic James Jones novel. Ray was the long-time editor of The Spearhead News, the Fifth Marine Division Association’s newsletter, as well as The Black Sands, published by the Iwo Jima Association of America.
He is a board member and former president of The James Jones Literary
Society (a group that promotes public interest and academic research in the author’s
World War II novels), a board member of the Illinois Center for the Book, and a founding
member of the Richard L. Pittman Marine Corps League in Urbana, Ill. Ray
continues to work with and encourage aspiring writers of all ages to find those
stories within their own lives that hold up a mirror to life and reveal aspects of life to
which others can relate.
Elliott stands by the old tree in Mount Pleasant Cemetery (Porterville, Ill.) where he set the first pages of his novel, “Wild Hands Toward the Sky.”