October 3, 2024 -- Dr. Brandon Hobson (Cherokee) will receive the Tulsa Library Trust’s “Festival of Words Writers Award” March 1, 2025, 10:30 a.m. at Central Library, 400 Civic Center. A book signing will follow. This event is free and open to the public.
Dr. Brandon Hobson was born and raised in Oklahoma and is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He graduated with his Ph.D. in creative writing from Oklahoma State University. Currently, Hobson is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University and also teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2022 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the fiction category.
He is the author of five books including Deep Ellum, Desolation of Avenues Untold, Where the Dead Sit Talking, The Removed and The Storyteller. His novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking, was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Reading West Award and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. The Storyteller, a kaleidoscope middle-grade adventure, was listed on New York Times Best Children’s Books of 2023.
Among his other accolades, Hobson has a Pushcart Prize for fiction and his short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories for 2021, McSweeney’s, Conjunctions and NOON.
Inaugurated in 2001, the American Indian Festival of Words Writers Award recognizes written contributions of outstanding American Indian authors, poets, journalists, film and stage scriptwriters. It is the first and only award given by a public library to honor an American Indian writer. The award is given in odd-numbered years. Recipients receive a $10,000 cash prize, provided by the Tulsa Library Trust and the Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation.
Previous winners include: 2001, Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek); 2003, Vine DeLoria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux); 2005, Leslie Marmon-Silko (Laguna Pueblo); 2007, Carter Revard (Osage); 2011, LeAnne Howe (Choctaw); 2013, Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Muscogee Creek); 2015, Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki); 2017, Tim Tingle (Choctaw); 2019, Laura Tohe (Diné, Tsénahabiłnii, Sleepy Rock People clan, and born for the Tódich’inii, Bitter Water clan); 2021, Tommy Orange (Cheyenne/Arapaho) and 2023, Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet).
Throughout March, TCCL’s American Indian Resource Center will present programming featuring cultural, educational and informational resources highlighting American Indian culture.
For more information on library programming, call the AskUs Hotline, 918-549-7323, or visit the library’s website, www.tulsalibrary.org.
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