The Burning Heart of the World by Nancy Kricorian is featured in Publishers Weekly. The reviewer highlights this work as a “an impactful story of trauma”.

In a recent interview with Poets House, Elise Paschen reflects on the themes behind her collection Blood Wolf Moon, including Osage heritage, family legacy, dreams, and memory. She also shares how her personal history and cultural background shape her poetic voice.

In a recent interview with Heartwood Literary Magazine, Gaylord Brewer discusses his writing process, the interplay between poetry, fiction, and visual art, and the themes that continue to shape his work—including nature, spirituality, and human complexity.

We are pleased to announce that the audiobook edition of The Sea Gives Up the Dead by Molly Olguín is now available, highlighted by RBmedia in “April 2025 Audiobook Releases”.

Receiving multiple bookseller recommendations and featured on Libro.fm, The Sea Gives Up the Dead is currently ranked 5 in Bestselling Short Stories Audiobooks.

This week’s Oklahoma best sellers are based on total number of sales at Tulsa’s Magic City Books, Best of Books in Edmond, Brace Books in Ponca City, and Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma City.

Here are the Oklahoma best sellers for Sunday, April 27. 

I Was a Bell by M. Soledad Caballero is featured in Electric Literature’s list, “8 Debut Poetry Collections by Poets Over 40.”

The list celebrates the unique power of debuting later in life, recognizing how publishing a first book in middle age or beyond brings a depth of perspective. These collections explore subjects that often go unwritten in earlier years—offering insight, experience, and emotional complexity shaped by time.

Abi Pollokoff is highlighted as Poet of the Week by Brooklyn Poets. The feature includes her poem “lilies & these eroded” from night myths • • before the body, alongside an interview discussing her creative process, experiences in Brooklyn, and more.

Molly Olguín’s latest release, The Sea Gives Up the Dead, has been selected by WFAE as one of the week’s Revolutionary readings.

Reviewer Colin Dwyer describes the book as “dark, occasionally surreal fantasies that interweave elements of history, sci-fi and horror, fairy tales and advice columns.”

KQED features Andrew Lam on its Perspectives series, where he reflects on the enduring memories of the Vietnam War.

Adela Najarro is a poet with a social consciousness who is working on a novel. She serves on the board of directors for  and works with the Latine/x community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area. She is the author of four poetry collections: Split Geography, Twice Told Over, My Childrens, and Volcanic Interruptions, a chapbook that includes Janet Trenchard’s artwork.

“Blood Wolf Moon” begins with a long poem called “Heritage,” which consists of a bracelet of poems modelled after a crown of sonnets. At one stage, the long poem was titled “Heritage of the Blood Wolf Moon.”    

“Heritage III” begins with the line: “I was born in the month of the Blood Wolf Moon,” which refers to the super blood wolf moon, a moon in eclipse, which sometimes transpires in January. It’s an actual supernatural phenomenon that doesn’t happen often, and I took a bit of poetic license as I don’t know whether this eclipse occurred the month when I was born.   

As I was working on the manuscript, I eventually decided to use “Heritage” as the title for the long poem and then adopt “Blood Wolf Moon” for the book’s title.   

The Orange County Register spotlights several Vietnamese American artists, including Andrew Lam, who shares his personal story of fleeing Vietnam for the United States as a child just before the fall of Saigon. In the piece, Lam reflects on how that experience—and the emotions and trauma surrounding it—have shaped his journey and voice as a writer.

CHICAGO (WGN) — Some believe destiny is whispered through the wind. Among the tall grass of Oklahoma’s Osage Tribal Reservation, many stories slip between its reeds.

Some stories are about wealth, greed and murder, but one is of a mother and daughter who would make certain the world wouldn’t forget the elders who lived it.

Elise Paschen is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation. She is the author of six poetry collections, gracefully penning the words her ancestors once spoke.

Andrew Lam is interviewed in Metro Silicon Valley’s article, “A Half-Century After Saigon’s Fall, the Diaspora Writes On.” In the conversation, Lam reflects on how writing has been a therapeutic and transformative experience—“I wrote so I can exorcise ghosts.”

The piece also recounts the powerful impact of Lam’s work, including a story of how one reader was moved to reflect on and make amends for his own past deeds after reading Lam’s writing on the Vietnamese American experience.

by Lynnell Edwards, poetry faculty and associate programs director

On the eve of the Kentucky Book Festival last November, a novelist friend came up to me at the writer’s reception and joked, “I saw that you were on the trauma panel.” I laughed, realizing of course, yes, my new release, The Bearable Slant of Light, had in fact landed me a moderator spot on a panel of authors whose new works grappled with stories of mental health and difficult life paths. Initially, I wasn’t sure what to make of this new categorization of my work, though I couldn’t very well deny that the book’s core poems, with their focus on my younger son’s onset and struggle with bipolar disorder, did, in fact, represent ten years of trauma for him, and for our family.

But what I didn’t then realize was that this focus would open up a whole new set of forums for sharing my work. While of course I hoped that the work would find readers among lovers of poetry generally, including the academic poetry community, as it has turned out, spending a year on the “trauma panel”—or, more accurately, the “trauma circuit”—has allowed me to take the work to audiences well beyond the ones I initially envisioned.