Steven W. Brallier

Steven Brallier is both a collector and teller of stories, a quality he likely developed in his childhood on the western highlands of Kenya. The oral traditions of Luhya storytellers together with the panoply of everyday experience delighted him and his brother and sisters. After graduating from Cornell in 1975, Steve worked for two years as Director of Public Information at Anderson University. When an opportunity came to become a concert promoter, he became the founding manager of Spring House Productions in Alexandria, Indiana, and, later, for Brallier Productions in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1987, Steve became an agent for the William Morris Agency, Nashville, a position he held for twelve years. After leaving William Morris, he, for several years, worked as an independent contractor, in several roles within the entertainment industry. Since 2012 Steve has devoted himself to writing, golf, and caring for his mountain cabin in Sewanee, Tennessee. He was nearing the end of his first novel, Then We Will Know, when, in late 2016, he was asked, by Adrienne and Mitka Kalinski, to write Mitka’s story. Steve was given unfettered and exclusive access to Mitka Kalinski and to seventy years of extensive records and photographs that document this story. From this, a deep mutual love and respect grew between author and subject. This trust, together with an innate skill as a storyteller and the capacity for hard—even dogged work—established Steve as the one to tell the story of Mitka Kalinski.