Rilla Askew was born in southeastern Oklahoma, a fifth generation descendant of southerners who settled in the Choctaw Nation in the late 1800's. Askew's roots go deep in the Sans Bois country, where her family still lives, but in 1980 she moved to New York to pursue an acting career. She soon turned to writing plays, and then fiction. She's the author of four novels and a book of stories, including her award-winning novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah. In 2009 Askew received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her latest novel, Kind of Kin, about the family-fracturing consequences of a state immigration law, is published by Ecco.