“Oklahoma is more than just another state,” the historian Angie Debo once wrote. “The one who can interpret Oklahoma can grasp the meaning of America in the modern world.” Based in Norman, Okla., since 1928, the University of Oklahoma Press was the first university press in the Southwest. Long a leading publisher of books about the American West and the Native American experience, the press also produces books in the fields of environmental history, classical studies, and military history and works for instructors in higher education.
OU Press, which will celebrate its 100-year anniversary in 2028, is committed to publishing books that inform national conversations, a mission reflected in its diverse list of new and forthcoming titles, such as Tulsa, 2021: A Massacre’s Centennial and a Nation’s Reckoning by Randy Krehbiel, Low April Sun: A Novel by Constance E. Squires, and The State of Sequoyah: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Quest for an Indian State by Donald L. Fixico. The press also publishes works that speak to readers in the region, as well as cutting-edge scholarly titles that shape contemporary debates.
As part of a state that is home to 39 federally recognized tribes, OU Press has published books on historical and contemporary subjects of significance to Indigenous people. Topics include tribal sovereignty, politics and activism, art, and literature. That proud tradition is carried on today, as illustrated in the New Directions in Native American Studies series, edited by Liza Black, who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and Colin G. Calloway.
The press’s oldest active title is The Sacred Pipe by Joseph Epes Brown, first released in 1953, which has sold more than 140,000 copies. In 2023, the press reissued Charles H. Red Corn’s A Pipe for February: A Novel (2002), with a new foreword by Martin Scorsese. Scorsese credited the novel with helping him to better understand the Osage Nation and its citizens when making the film Killers of the Flower Moon. In October, the press published its first work of Native horror fiction, The Bone Picker: Native Stories, Alternate Histories by Devon A. Mihesuah. Filled with Choctaw lore, it explores how ancient beings are ever-present and influence tribal consciousness today.
The year 2024 was one of renewal for the press with the appointment of director Tony Roberts. Roberts previously served as editorial, design, and production manager and is an award-winning graphic designer. The press also launched three new book series: Environmental History’s Futures, edited by Bryan McCammack and Richard M. Mizelle Jr.; Power Plays: The New Sports Studies, edited by Louis Moore, Victoria Jackson, and Noah Cohan; and Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed, edited by James M. Lang and Michelle D. Miller.
A recent title from the press that embodies this year’s UP Week theme of #StepUP is A Pedagogy of Kindness by Catherine Denial, the inaugural volume in the Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed series. Chock-full of practical tips, A Pedagogy of Kindness “calls for a different kind of learning environment and seeks to build a vibrant community of scholars, one defined by compassion and inspiration,” the press says.
