November 4, 2008 Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room, Edmon Low Library

Author appears Nov. 13 to commemorate Statehood Day

Story by Maggie Kierl, OSU Library Communications Intern

STILLWATER - Oklahoma author Rilla Askew presents "Oklahoma: Penumbra and Paradox," Thurs. Nov. 13, at 7 p.m. in the Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room. The talk will commemorate Oklahoma Statehood Day. A book sale and signing reception will follow.

"When I heard Rilla's acceptance speech for a national writing award I knew she'd be the perfect person to launch our annual Statehood Day Lecture series. The breadth, depth, subtlety and directness of her words speak to the power and richness of the Oklahoma experience," said Ron McCoy, history professor and member of the newly formed Center for Oklahoma Studies.

Askew has received three Oklahoma Book Awards, two Western Heritage Awards, an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and a Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. She is the author of The Mercy Seat, Fire in Beulah and Harpsong.

Rilla Askew was born in southeastern Oklahoma, a fifth-generation descendant of southerners who settled in the Choctaw Nation in the late 1800s. Askew's roots go deep in the Sans Bois country, where her family still lives, but she grew up fifty miles from Tulsa in the oil company town of Bartlesville. It was there she first encountered the complex forces of race, class and societal opinion: elements she continues to explore in her fiction.

This event is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the Friends of the OSU Library and the OSU Center for Oklahoma Studies. For more information about this event, visit www.library.okstate.edu or call 405-744-7331.

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