RILLA ASKEW’s 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. Her second novel, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and the Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. Her recent novel, Harpsong, is published by the University of Oklahoma Press.  Askew’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines, and her story "The Killing Blanet" was selected for Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards. She received a Writing Fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbertide, Italy, in 2004. She divides her time between Oklahoma, where she teaches in the spring semesters, and her home in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.