Rilla Askew

Rilla Askew (born 1951) is an American novelist and short story writer who was born in Poteau, in the Sans Bois Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, and grew up in the town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.[1]

Rilla Askew
BornPoteau, Oklahoma
OccupationAuthor
Alma materUniversity of Tulsa; Brooklyn College
GenresFiction, nonfiction
Website
www.rillaaskew.com

Early life and education

Askew graduated from the University of Tulsa with a B.F.A. in Theatre Performance in 1980. She moved then to New York where she studied acting at HB Studio with Herbert Bergoff in New York and later Curt Dempster at Ensemble Studio Theatre.[2] She began writing—plays first, then fiction—with her theatre background supporting the use of language and rhythm in her works.[2] She went on to study creative writing at Brooklyn College, where she received her MFA in 1989.[3]

Rilla has taught in MFA writing programs at Syracuse University, Brooklyn College, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[4]

Askew is married to actor Paul Austin.

Career

In 1989 Askew published her first short story “The Gift” in Nimrod’s “Oklahoma Indian Markings” issue.[5] Her essays and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, TriQuarterly, Nimrod, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Her story "The Killing Blanket" was selected for the collection Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards (Anchor, 1993).

Often capturing life in Oklahoma,[6] Askew’s work handles themes of place,[7] outsiders, religion and politics, greed and ambition, race, and women’s lives.[8][9] In his citation for the American Academy of Arts and Letters, writer Allan Gurganus likens Askew's writing to a mythic cycle that unsettles popular notions of the settling of the American West[10] Writer Patricia Eakins notes Askew’s filiation with other American writers of the epic tradition, exploring tragedies of history and family and unforgiving landscapes, with comparisons to William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy.[2][11]

Inspired by her family history, Askew's first novel, The Mercy Seat (1997) follows two rival brothers, and transforms the family drama into the drama of a community.[2] It was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award,[12] the Dublin IMPAC Prize, was a Boston Globe Notable Book, and received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage Award in 1998.[2]

In 2002, her second novel Fire in Beulah (2001), about the Tulsa Race Massacre, received the American Book Award[13] and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights.[14] In this historical novel, as in her other works, some critics have discussed how Askew offers the strong presence and prominence to the Other as a corrective to a-historic and romanticized visions of the American southwest.[15]

Askew's third novel, Harpsong (2007), is set in 1930's Oklahoma and concerns the dispossessed and homeless during the Dust Bowl era.[16][17] Harpsong received the Oklahoma Book Award,[18][19] the Western Heritage Award,[20] the WILLA Award from Women Writing the West,[21] and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers League of Texas in 2008.[22][23] Poet Mary Green described it as "a love song to the American voice and the American perspective…about the love that is involved—with all the accompanying stark failings and supreme acts of kindness—in being fully human."[24]

Her fourth novel, Kind of Kin (2013), is set in Cedar, Oklahoma and focuses on state immigration laws, race, religion, and class.[25] Published by Ecco, Kind of Kin was a finalist for the 2014 Western Spur Award,[26] the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award in 2013,[27] and was long-listed for the 2015 Dublin IMPAC Prize.[28]

Askew’s 2017 collection of creative nonfiction Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place, which reckons with truths obscured by collective memory,[29] was long-listed for the PEN/America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Art of the Essay Award in 2018[30].

She teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.

Awards and recognition

In 2009, she received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[31]

In 2003, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame.[32] Askew was a 2004 fellow at Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbertide, Italy,[33] and a featured writer at the 2008 World Literature Today and Chinese Literature Conference in Beijing. She served as a juror for the 2008 Neustadt Prize for Literature.[34][35]

Askew received the 2011 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book.[12][36]

Fire in Beulah was selected as the 2007 Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma book.[37]

Awards
  • PEN/America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award Art of the Essay Semifinalist – 2018 – Most American
  • Dublin IMPAC Prize Longlist – 2014 – Kind of Kin
  • Spur Award Finalist – 2014 – Kind of Kin
  • Oklahoma Book Award Finalist – 2014 – Kind of Kin
  • Women Writing the West WILLA Award – 2008 - Harpsong
  • Violet Crown Award – 2008 - Harpsong
  • Western Heritage Award – 2008 – Harpsong
  • Oklahoma Book Award – 2008 – Harpsong
  • American Book Award – 2002 – Fire in Beulah
  • Myers Book Award – 2002 – Fire in Beulah
  • PEN/Faulkner Finalist – 1998 – The Mercy Seat
  • Western Heritage Award – 1998 – The Mercy Seat
  • Oklahoma Book Award – 1998 – The Mercy Seat
  • Oklahoma Book Award – 1993 – Strange Business
  • Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers – 1992 – Strange Business

Bibliography

Books
  • Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017)
  • Kind of Kin (Ecco Press US, 2013), (Atlantic Press UK, 2013)
  • Harpsong (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007)
  • Fire in Beulah (Viking, 2001), (Penguin, 2001)
  • The Mercy Seat (Viking, 1998), (Penguin, 1998)
  • Strange Business (Viking, 1992), (Penguin, 1992)

Selected essays
  • AGNI “Dear Tulsa” 2019[38]
  • Pacific Standard “Postcards from America” 2018
  • Great Plains Quarterly “Epicenter: Deep Mapping Place in Fiction and Nonfiction” 2017
  • Flock “Snake Season” 2017
  • Green Country “A Sense of Place” 2016
  • This Land “Home Territory” 2016
  • This Land “Trail” 2015
  • Longreads “The Cost” 2015[39]
  • This Land “Near McAlester” 2014
  • Tri-Quarterly “The Tornado That Hit Boggy” 2014
  • The Daily Beast “The Cost: What Stop and Frisk Does to a Young Man’s Soul” 2014
  • Tin House “Rhumba” 2013
  • London Daily Telegraph “Growing Up in Tornado Alley” 2013
  • Transatlantica “Race and Redemption in the American Heartland” 2012
  • Arcadia “Crime and Innocence” 2010
  • World Literature Today “Passing: The Writer’s Skin and the Authentic Self” 2009
  • Nimrod “Most American” 2006

References
  1. "Askew, Rilla | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture". www.okhistory.org. Oklahoma Historical Society. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  2. Askew, Rilla (21 December 2011). "Race and Redemption in the American Heartland. With an Introduction by Françoise Palleau-Papin". Transatlantica. Revue d'études américaines. American Studies Journal (in French) (2): 2–3. ISSN 1765-2766. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  3. Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers. http://poetsandwriters.okstate.edu/OKauthor/askew.html
  4. University of Central Oklahoma. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-07-18. Retrieved 2014-10-08.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. Askew, Rilla (1989). "The Gift". Nimrod. 32 (2, Spring/Summer 1989).
  6. Reese, Linda W. "Askew, Rilla | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture". www.okhistory.org. Oklahoma Historical Society. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  7. Askew, Rilla (2009). "Passing: The Writer's Skin and the Authentic Self". World Literature Today. 83 (4): 54–57. ISSN 0196-3570. JSTOR 20621660.
  8. Askew, Rilla (2017). "Epicenter: Deep Mapping Place in Fiction and Nonfiction". Great Plains Quarterly. 37 (4): 259–263. doi:10.1353/gpq.2017.0054. S2CID 165667978.
  9. Erens, Pamela (20 November 2013). "Kind of Kin: An Interview with Rilla Askew". Tin House.
  10. Gurganus, Allan. (20 May 2009). Verbal citation given for Rilla Askew's 2009 Literature Award for American Academy of Arts and Letters.
  11. Hada, Kenneth. "That truth beyond particulars: silence in Rilla Askew's The Mercy Seat." Southwestern American Literature, vol. 30, no. 1, 2004, p. 37+. Gale Academic OneFile, Accessed 10 May 2020. "'Rilla Askew's first novel, The Mercy Seat (1998), received highly positive reviews. Allusions to Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy were often made. Gail Caldwell of The Boston Globe has written, the 'extraordinary story owes its literary debt to Faulkner and its heart to scripture.' The novel, she continues, is 'driven by a narrative intensity that is humbling in its passion, consumed with the old-fashioned mysteries too large and too dark for most contemporary writers to go near.... Askew has gone after the mystery of mercy itself.'"
  12. "Oklahoma Book Awards honor state authors". Oklahoman.com. 2011-04-10. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  13. "American Book Awards | Before Columbus Foundation - Winners of the American Book Awards". Before Columbus Foundation. Before Columbus Foundation.
  14. "Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award | Book awards | LibraryThing". www.librarything.com. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  15. Hada, Kenneth (2007). "The Power to Undo Sin: Race, History and Literary Blackness in Rilla Askew's "Fire in Beulah"". College Literature. 34 (4): 166–189. ISSN 0093-3139. JSTOR 25115463. Askew's historical fiction demonstrates the authority of what Toni Morrison and Henry Louis Gates Jr. understand as literary blackness. Askew writes the black presence into her novel as a corrective to the often romanticized notions white supremacy found throughout much of the history of the American southwest. Like Hogan, Askew unearths corruption concerning oil and greed, her novel culminating with the Tulsa race riot - the most costly race riot in American history. Askew's vision not only gives voice to the presence of the Other, she essentially crosses literary boundaries to appropriate and celebrate the minority presence. (Abstract)
  16. Watts, James D (22 April 2007). "Rilla, reading". Tulsa World. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  17. "Harpsong". Historical Novel Society. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  18. "Oklahoma Center for the Book. 2008 Oklahoma Book Award Program". Oklahoma Digital Prairie - your Electronic Library. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  19. "Norman authors sweep the Oklahoma Center for the Book Awards". The Norman Transcript. 15 Feb 2008. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  20. "Past Western Heritage Award Winners". National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  21. "The WILLA Literary Award – Women Writing the West - Previous WILLA Literary Award Winners and Finalists". Women Writing the West. Women Writing the West. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  22. "Writers' League of Texas Book Awards Past Winners". Writers’ League of Texas. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  23. Jones, Kimberly (11 September 2008). "Writers' League of Texas Announces Nominees - 2008 Violet Crown Book Awards". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  24. Greene, Mary (2007). "Harpsong". The Literary Gazette.
  25. Evison, Jonathan (25 Jan 2013). "Neighbor Versus Neighbor". The New York Times.
  26. "Winners". Western Writers of America. Western Writers of America. 12 May 2012. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  27. Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association. (2014) READING THE WEST BOOK AWARDS 2013 Awards Year - Shortlist Selections [Press release]. 31 March. Available at: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Reading-the-West-Book-Awards---Shortlist-Selections-March-31--2014.html?soid=1101210809075&aid=O_QHBultlSY (Accessed: 5 June 2020).
  28. "News: 2015 Printable Longlist". International Dublin Literary Award - The International Dublin Literary Award from the home of literature, proudly sponsored by Dublin City Council. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  29. Smith, Lindsey Claire (2018). "Review of Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place, by Rilla Askew". Western American Literature. 53 (2): 263–265. doi:10.1353/wal.2018.0050. S2CID 166210706. As Askew reveals in her sensitive exploration of these features of the American character—optimism, skepticism, and amnesia—remembering is vital to personal and cultural transformation. . . .With this collection, Askew makes the case for a reckoning with collective memory that often obscures truth.
  30. "Announcing the 2018 PEN America Literary Awards Longlists". PEN America. PEN America. 20 December 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  31. "Awards – American Academy of Arts and Letters". AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS. American Academy of Arts and Letters. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  32. Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-11-08. Retrieved 2017-03-01.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  33. Civitella Raniere "Rilla Askew". Civitella Ranieri. Civitella Ranieri Foundation. 21 August 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  34. "The Neustadt Prize". World Literature Today. 83 (3): 40. May 2009 – via ProQuest.
  35. "2008 - Patricia Grace". Neustadt Prizes. 2013-06-10. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  36. "Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award – OK Dept. of Libraries". Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  37. "Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma / Fire in Beulah". www.okreadsok.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  38. Askew, Rilla (15 Oct 2019). "Dear Tulsa". AGNI.
  39. "The Cost". Longreads. 2014-12-17. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
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