59th Western Literature Association Conference
Date: September 21–24, 2025
[Please note that this year, we will meet from Sunday through Wednesday!]
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Venue: OKANA Resort and Indoor Waterpark
THEME: Words of Fire: Honoring the Multicultural Western Narrative
Coordinated by WLA President Dr. Kalenda Eaton
The 2025 WLA Conference Program is now available as a pdf.
The registration portal is open! Log yourself back into Conftool (https://www.conftool.pro/wla-conference-2025/) and register for the conference. If you are not presenting a paper, but would like to attend the conference, you must first create an account and then you can go directly to “registration.”
Early Bird Registration (lower rates) ends on August 23.
Presenters who have not registered and paid their fees by September 5 will be dropped from the program—unless they have made arrangements with Dr. Eaton.
Donations accepted 😀
We appreciate your commitment to furthering literary and cultural studies. Donations to the 2025 WLA Conference are gladly accepted. The Western Literature Association is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. All donations are tax-deductible.
Distinguished Achievement Award Recipient 2025
Quraysh Ali Lansana
Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of over twenty books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. Lansana is a Visiting Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa and an alumnus of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. He was formerly a Lecturer in Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa where he also served as Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR’s “Focus: Black Oklahoma” monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award, and was a Peabody Award nominee.
Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Award and a 2022 National Educational Telecommunications Association Public Media Award for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film “Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.” Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today magazine. A former faculty member of both the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Drama Division of The Juilliard School, Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002–2012 and was Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing there until 2014.
His most recent books include Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse (with Joel Daniel Phillips), Opal’s Greenwood Oasis, the skin of dreams: new and collected poems, 1995–2018, The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent, and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop. Forthcoming titles include a children’s biography of Ralph Ellison, a memoir on the last decade of his mentor, Miss Gwendolyn Brooks, and a series of books on the Black Rodeo. Lansana’s work appears in Best American Poetry 2019. He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Oklahoma Humanities, and the Tulsa Press Club. Lansana is a Curatorial Scholar for the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art and a Curatorial Board Co-Chair for the Ragdale Foundation. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of the first cohort of the Culture of Health Leadership for Racial Healing Fellowship.
AIRPORT TRANSPORTATION:
In addition to ridesharing services, there is a local airport shuttle that charges $36 (each way) from the airport to the hotel. For parties of more than one, the charge is $3 for each additional passenger. Reservations can be made online or via phone.
Airport Express – Oklahoma City and the Will Rogers International Airport
405.681.3311 and 877.688.3311
VENUE and RESERVATION INFORMATION
Note: The discount for our room block will be applied if you make your hotel reservation by SEPTEMBER 11! Please be sure to stay at the conference hotel to help us fill those rooms we are committed to. Please call the Okana Resort directly to make your reservation and be sure to mention your affiliation with the Western Literature Association to get the room rate (and to count toward our reserved room block)!
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The 59th Western Literature Association conference will be held September 21-24, 2025, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma at the new OKANA Resort and Indoor Waterpark. (Direct booking link with conference discount can be found a little further down.) The property was developed by the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and the hotel is adjacent to the First Americans Museum (FAM) which celebrates and honors “the collective histories of 39 distinctive First American Nations in the state.” Oklahoma, originally named by the Choctaw people and designated “Indian Territory” by the U.S. government, is historically known as a site of indigenous removal and displacement. In its present, it sits firmly at the core of activism around sovereignty, education, land rights, reparations, prison abolition, reproductive rights, immigration policies, and environmental justice. While often studied for its natural resources and tumultuous weather, Oklahoma is a thriving, culturally rich, and complex state with a long multiracial and multicultural history that situates it at the crossroads of issues relevant to American society.
Oklahoma’s literary contributions are vast. The rich narrative history includes oral storytelling existing alongside poetry and short fiction published in early periodicals. Additionally, Oklahoma literature encompasses drama and fiction portraying a wide array of societal themes focused on land, urban youth culture, cultural preservation, migration, rurality, and dystopic futures, to name a few. Oklahoma is also well-known for classic young adult fiction; internationally celebrated American authors (e.g., Ralph Ellison, S.E. Hinton, N. Scott Momaday, Joy Harjo, Lynn Riggs); and over a century of poetry and screenplays celebrating its dynamic and diverse communities. Its unique geographic location (bordering Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Missouri) makes Oklahoma ideal to engage in discussions about (re)centering multiculturalism and the western narrative.
WLA 2025 will serve as a space to gather and consider the ability of words to revolutionize, honor, and inspire change. WLA 2025 will continue discussions from recent WLA conferences on sustainability, transcendence, and literary experimentation, with an emphasis on how the multiculturalism of the past, present, and future has influenced (and will continue to influence) what we consider western literature.
After twenty-five years, WLA is making its return to Oklahoma. WLA 2025 will be a celebration and a call to action.
OKANA RESORT AND INDOOR WATERPARK (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
GROUP ROOM RATE – $189/night (includes the resort fee; hotel and city taxes not included).
BOOK DIRECTLY BY August 30th TO RECEIVE THE GROUP DISCOUNT:
Or you can call OKANA Resort at 572.228.4001. Press#6 for conference services. Use group code 109.
NOTE:
- Children 2 years old and under are complimentary to stay at OKANA. Two people per room. Anyone age 3 yrs. and over outside the two-person limit will be charged a $25 fee per person, per night.
- Two waterpark passes are included with each standard guest room. Additional people staying in a room will be charged the $25 as mentioned, and this does include the Waterpark pass for them.
For more information, contact WLA 2025 President Kalenda Eaton at: wlaconference2025@westernlit.org.
WLA 2025 is a call to action to critically examine and celebrate the multicultural foundations of western literature. We look forward to your contributions in shaping this important dialogue.