[2] His novel Time for Glory (1968, William Morrow & Co.) received the University of Oklahoma award for literary excellence and was designated as recommended reading by the Black Panther Party and the Christian Book List.

[7] In 1953, he quit his job and moved Gaylon and their two daughters into a 3-room migrant house on the outskirts of Altus where the rent was $10/month so he could devote his full time to writing short stories.

[7] Bristow moved his family to Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1961, where he became writer-in-residence and professor in the Dept.

[14][15] One story, "And Practically Strangers," originally published in Redbook magazine as "Hero's Reward," was aired on Schlitz Playhouse in 1959.

Bristow's first hardback novel, Time for Glory (1968, William Morrow & Co.), published in the same year that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, received the University of Oklahoma award for literary excellence.

Night Season is a story of a college educated Black American, Toby Snow, who makes a living as a sign painter, and the woman who loves him, Roxanne, a prostitute.

[21] Bristow's third hardback novel, A Faraway Drummer (1973, Crown Publishers) is a story that reveals the traps of loyalty and responsibility in small town South Carolina.

[31] Bristow was born November 17, 1926, in St. Louis, MO, and died August 15, 2018, in Rock Hill, SC.