Steven Edwin Conliff (1949 - 2006)

Native North American writer, historian, publisher and social satirist, best known for throwing a 1977 banana cream pie at Ohio Gov. James A. Rhodes to protest the Kent State killings of 1970.

That summer of martial law Steven E. Conliff started his first alternative publication, Purple Berries, and met artist Suzan Bird. They married in 1973 (and produced sons in 1981, 1986 and 1993). Both contributed to the Columbus Free Press (1971-92), YIPster Times (1972-78), Subversive Scholastic (1978-84) and Overthrow (1979-86). One continuing character, the “Leader of the Street People” Zorba the Freak, became legendary.

With Dana Beal and the Yippies (Youth International Party), Steven Conliff put out the anthology Blacklisted News: Secret Histories from Chicago ‘68 to 1984, foreward by William Kunstler (Bleecker, 1983). Steve Conliff’s work also appeared in High Times, News from Indian Country and the Mohican News, and he ran Columbus Entertainment Magazine (1986-88). He served as transatlantic coordinator of Rock Against Racism; edited and published his father’s account of World War II in the Aleutians, E.B. Conliff’s History of the 37th Infantry (Bleecker, 1994); ghost-wrote a 1992 campaign biography that helped oust a local despot (Smith: Portrait of a Sheriff); and authored several influential reports condemning Battelle Memorial Institute’s involvement in the Fernald uranium-processing facility clean-up. During the first Gulf War, having interviewed their developers, he warned about depleted uranium weapons.

A Tribal descendant, Conliff presented papers detailing Mohican Indian history on the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation (2001) and at the New York State Museum in Albany (2004). Has contributed American Indian ethnography to Notable Native Americans (Gale, 1993) and Volume 1 of the Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes (1998).

Published poetry Peace in Persia (1981) and the 1979 epic “Zeitgeist! The Ballad of Tom Forcade” (Blacklisted News), a history of the counter-culture (“The Dreaded Yippie Curse,” ibid.), and a novel, Chief Buffalo (free download made available on-line in 2003, reproduction and sale authorized). His second novel, The Green Arm, a satire on weapons of mass destruction, is available here.

An account of Conliff’s early career is in Steve Abbott’s “Karl and Groucho’s Marxist Dance,” Voices Underground: Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, Vol. 1, Ken Wachsberger, ed. (Mica’s Press, 1993).

Suzan Bird-Conliff, as Assistant Treasurer for Fees and Deposits of The Ohio State University, pioneered paperless billing. Her artwork frequently accompanies her husband’s writings, and she has sold hundreds of individual oil portaits. Both accept commissions; titles listed in boldface are currently available ($30 ea. ppd., S. Conliff, 1483 Pemberton Dr., Columbus, Ohio 43221).