| Birth Place: | Chicago, United States |
| Occupation: | Author, cultural historian |
| Nationality: | American |
| Genre: | Crime, true crime, politics, art |
| Language: | English |
Michael P. Daley is an American author and cultural historian. Daley's work primarily concerns crime, subcultures, politics, and art. He is a former counterculture archivist and political news editor.[1]
From 2009 to 2014, Daley was employed at Boo-Hooray as an archivist engaged in the preservation of counterculture and political movements. During his time at Boo-Hooray, he facilitated the sale of cultural collections to institutions such as Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Cornell's Rare & Manuscript Collections, Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Miami's Special Collections, and Georgetown's Lauinger Library.[2] He has also curated exhibitions on William S. Burroughs,[3] Ed Wood,[4] private press vinyl,[5] science-fiction zines,[6] and Civil War photography in cities like New York City, Paris, London, and Montreal.[2]
One of Daley's first works as an author was That's Life: The O.L. Jaggers Story (Boo-Hooray, 2011) a short biographical pamphlet which talked about the legal struggles of a cult L.A. preacher once famed for his UFO-themed sermons. Daley has also worked as an editor for books like Feel the Music: The Psychedelic Worlds of Paul Major (Anthology Editions, 2017),[7] Flying Saucers Are Real! (Anthology Editions, 2016),[8] The Situationist Times facsimile edition (Boo-Hooray, 2012),[9] and Houston Rap Tapes (Sinecure Books, 2013).[10]
In 2017, Daley founded First To Knock, a small press publisher and sometime record label.[11] First To Knock titles are irregularly published and include Echoes of a Natural World: Tales of the Strange & Estranged (2020), a weird fiction collection that featured contemporary fiction by Daley and others, alongside new translations of French authors such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, Marcel Schwob, and Jean Lorrain.[12] [13] [14]
In 2018, Daley’s Bobby BlueJacket: The Tribe, The Joint, The Tulsa Underworld was published. Released on Daley’s First To Knock imprint, the book is a biography of a Native American career thief and safecracker who became a prison journalist and ultimately an Eastern Shawnee activist.[15] [16] Daley researched and wrote Bobby BlueJacket over a period of six years. Referencing the microhistorical approach in the book's introduction, Bobby BlueJacket broaches larger questions about United States history through its specific focus on a single, relatively unknown individual.[17] Ron Padgett, an award-winning author and poet, regarded the book as a "fascinating and richly detailed biography and an intimate portrait of complex emotional and intellectual life". Jack Womack, a Philip K. Dick awardee described BlueJacket as: "Insightful, angry, straightforward, reminiscent of the subterranean classic You Can't Win by Jack Black." Daley's BlueJacket was featured in Los Angeles Review of Books,[17] Tulsa World,[15] Weird History,[18] Bustle,[19] This Land Press,[20] and Public Radio Tulsa/NPR.[16] The book was nominated for best non-fiction work for the 30th annual Oklahoma Book Awards.[21]
Daley also co-authored and edited (Sinecure Books, 2013), which was featured in the BBC,[22] Vice,[1] and was called "the greatest music book of the year" by Los Angeles Magazine.[23]