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Rilla Askew left Oklahoma for New York, but she returned by the power of the pen.
You can't go home again. That's what Thomas Wolfe wrote, but you may have to leave home to be able to write about home.
Ask Rilla Askew, one of the featured writers at this year's Celebration of Books, Sept. 24-25 at OSU-Tulsa. A Bartlesville native, Askew moved to New York to pursue an acting career but instead became an acclaimed author, earning an M.F.A. from Brooklyn College, and publishing powerful novels all set in Oklahoma.
Askew will tell you that she wrote herself back to Oklahoma. Working in New York, she tried to set her stories elsewhere but ended up setting them here in her home state. She had to leave home to really write about home.
Her novel, "The Mercy Seat" (Penguin, 1998), tells the epic story of two brothers' journey from Kentucky and settlement in the Choctaw Nation in the 1800s. The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 is the central focus of her historical novel "Fire in Beulah" (Penguin 2001). "Harpsong" (University of Oklahoma Press 2007) imagines the life of a Dust Bowl-era troubadour who stays in Oklahoma instead of joining the exodus to California and provides an alternative narrative to troubadour "The Grapes of Wrath."
About her connection to Oklahoma, Askew has said:
"It’s like I’m tethered here. ... All of the landscapes really, deeply speak to me, the open spaces, the flatlands, the great sky, as well as those mountains down in southeastern Oklahoma, which is where the real source is for me. It’s a strong sense of place that I’m not sure I had any way to understand until I left."
Together with poet/editor Jim Barnes and popular local writer Hannibal Johnson, Askew will be speaking on Oklahoma Landscapes at the Celebration of Books. Call 594-8215 for information.
