Carlyle Tillery book typescript

Carlyle Tillery was born 6 December 1904, in Greensburg, Louisiana. He was a graduate of Mississippi State College, where he earn a B.S. degree. In the years before World War II, he was a statistical clerk in agricultural economics and agronomy. He also spent two years on a banana plantation in Central America. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II. After 1945, he moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he was a clerk in the local Jitney Jungle supermarket.

After moving to Tuscaloosa, Tillery studied creative writing under Hudson Strode. It was during this time that Tillery's novel, Red Bone Woman, was published. He is described in an article in the Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News (10 July 1949), as "a kindly, quiet man, fortyish,with rather sparse red hair, a freckled face, and glasses that hit a little farther down his nose than usual. On week days he ambles busily but unobtrusively up and down the aisles of Jitney Jungle Super Market No. 1 where he is employed in the stock room."