O. W. (Oscar William) Coursey

Born in 1873 and active in South Dakota publishing, O. W. Coursey wrote across several genres, including fiction, biography, regional history, and reference works. Records of his books show a strong connection to Mitchell, South Dakota, where titles such as Who's Who in South Dakota and Literature of South Dakota were published.

His work often focused on people and places he knew well. In addition to compiling biographical and literary reference books, he wrote The Woman with a Stone Heart: A Romance of the Philippine War and also published works tied to the Philippines and to South Dakota figures such as William Henry Harrison Beadle. That mix suggests a writer interested in both public memory and popular reading.

Coursey died in 1946. While he is not widely read today, his books remain useful to readers curious about South Dakota's cultural history and about the kind of ambitious, locally rooted publishing that flourished in the early 1900s.