Dwight Newton

Dwight Bennett Newton (January 14, 1916 – June 30, 2013) was an American writer of westerns. He also wrote under the names Dwight Bennett, Clement Hardin, Ford Logan, Hank Mitchum and Dan Temple. Newton was one of the six founder members of the Western Writers of America. He was a writer and story consultant for various television shows including Wagon Train and Tales of Wells Fargo. Newton was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and began to write short stories for Western magazines while studying history at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. After graduating with a master's degree in 1942, he served in the Army Corps of Engineers until 1946, being based at Camp Abbot, a training center near Bend, Oregon, in 1943. After the war he settled in Bend, and became a professional writer, publishing 74 novels under various names, including one, Range Boss (Pocket Books, 1949), that was the first work of fiction issued in paperback, without having first appeared in hardcovers.In 1952 Newton was one of the six founder members of Western Writers of America, Inc., serving as its first secretary-treasurer, and as a board member for ten years.In the late 1950s, Newton moved to Hollywood to work as a writer and story consultant for several television shows, before returning to Bend in 1965.During the 1970s, he gave classes in fiction writing at Central Oregon Community College, and at the Haystack summer school at Cannon Beach.