Dale L. Walker is a native of Decatur, Illinois, a U.S. Navy veteran, and a journalism graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso.

A freelance writer since 1960, Walker specializes in Western American history, military history, 19th and early 20th century journalism and war correspondence, and Jack London studies, and is a biographer, historian, anthologist, newspaper book columnist, reviewer, and editor.

Among his twenty books are: The Lost Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (with Richard O'Connor, 1967), Buckey O'Neill: The Story of a Rough Rider (1975, 1998), Will Henry's West (1984), Januarius MacGahan: The Life and Campaigns of an American War Correspondent (1988), Mavericks: Ten Uncorraled Westerners (1989), Legends and Lies: Great Mysteries of the American West(1997), The Boys of '98: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders (1998), Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846 (1999) , Pacific Destiny: The Three-Century Journey to the Oregon Country (2000), Eldorado: The California Gold Rush (2003), Westward: A Fictional History of the American West (2003); The Calamity Papers: Western Myths and Cold Cases (2004), and Mary Walker: Above & Beyond (2005).

He has written extensively about Jack London and is author of such book-length studies as The Fiction of Jack London (1972) and Jack London and Conan Doyle: A Literary Kinship (1981), and is editor of three London collections: Curious Fragments: Jack London's Tales of Fantasy Fiction (1975, 1998), No Mentor But Myself: Jack London, the Writer's Writer (1979, 1999), and In a Far Country: Jack London's Tales of the West (1987).

Walker's over 400 magazine articles, 700 book reviews, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in 130 publications including Newsweek, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, The American West, Far West, Real West, The West, Wild West, Frontier Times, Montana, New Mexico Magazine, Trails West, Aviation Quarterly, Baker Street Journal, Mystery Scene, Firsts, Books of the Southwest, Texas Review, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Western American Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Pacific Historian, The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Dallas Morning News, Stars & Stripes, The Bloomsbury Review, Louis L'Amour Western Magazine, American Cowboy, and many others.

He has contributed to such reference works as The Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West (Crowell), 20th Century Western Writers (Gale),Encyclopedia of the American West (Simon & Schuster Macmillan), and American National Biography (Oxford). He is the major contributor to the Encyclopedia of the Old West (Grolier) and a contributor to such other books as The West That Was and Wild West Show! (Random House / Wings),New Trails (Doubleday), Great Stories of the West (Berkley), and Texas Forever (Forge).

He has contributed introductory essays to such books as In the Big Country by John Jakes, The Cannibal Owl by Chad Oliver, Moon of Thunder by Don Coldsmith,No Survivors, From Where the Sun Now Stands, Alias Butch Cassidy, The Gates of the Mountains, and five other classic novels by Will Henry, Ten Texas Feuds by C.L. Sonnichsen, and Stirrup High by Walt Coburn.

Walker has served as director of Texas Western Press of the University of Texas at El Paso, books editor for the El Paso Times, books columnist for the El Paso Herald-Post and the Rocky Mountain News, and is a consulting editor for Tom Doherty Associates (Tor/Forge Books) of New York.

A four-time recipient of the Spur Award from Western Writers of America, Inc., Walker received in 2000 the organization's Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in Western life and literature. He has received many other writing awards, is past-president (1992-1994) of Western Writers of America, and is a member of the Author’s Guild and the Texas Institute of Letters.