Rilla Askew is the author of short fiction, essays, and novels. Her first novel, The Mercy Seat, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage Award in 1998. Fire in Beulah, a novel about the Tulsa Race Massacre, received the American Book Award. Her story “The Killing Blanket” was selected for Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards. Askew’s most recent book, a memoir in essays, is Most American.