• Testimonials

    The resolute but congenial atmosphere of the WLA has set the tone for my approach to teaching and scholarship, and established my regard for active service to my institution and the profession.
    William V. Lombardi, 2017
    Grad student rep 2012–2014, Crow Grover Award recipient 2015, and EC Member 2016–2019

Tables of Contents Summer 2021 – Present

Editor: Amy Hamilton

Summer 2021 (WAL 56.2)

Editors’ LetterAmy Hamilton &
Kyle Bladow
ESSAYS 
Staying with the White Trouble of Recent Feminist WesternsKrista Comer
Text, Encounter, Genre: Returning (Again) to Black Elk SpeaksSam Stoeltje
Simons Town as Heterotopia: The Dynamic Interplay of Barrioization and Barriology in The Brick PeopleBeilei Yan and Longhai Zhang
REVIEWS 
Toni Jensen, Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen LandDoreen Pfost
Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush, and Sara L. Spurgeon, eds. Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, GenreTravis Franks
Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, Levi Romero, and Spencer Herrera, eds., Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico HomelandDaniel Arbino
Geneva M. Gano, The Little Art Colony and US Modernism: Carmel, Provincetown, TaosRobert Thacker
James H. Cox, The Political Arrays of American Indian Literary HistoryJoshua T. Anderson
Brady Harrison and Randi Lynn Tanglen, eds., Teaching Western American LiteratureSusan Kollin
Kiara Kharpertian, We Who Work the West: Class, Labor, and Space in Western American LiteratureDaniel Clausen

Fall 2021/Winter 2022 (WAL 56.3/4)

Special Double Issue: California, Cli-Fi, and Climate Crisis
Guest editor: Daniel D. Clausen

Guest Editor’s Introduction: What Happens in California Cli-Fi

Daniel D. Clausen
ESSAYS 
Pre-apocalypse Now: Gold Fame Citrus as Weird Western Cli-FiJennifer K. Ladino
Old Chestnuts: Seeding Alternative Communities and Alternative Futures in/with The OverstoryRyan Hediger
Uncenter Yourselves: Revisiting Robinson Jeffers’ Inhumanism in the Age of The OverstoryCory Willard
“A Land of Missing Things”: Extraction, Belonging, and Chinese Immigrant Labor in C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold  Ashley E. Reis
Cli-Fi Georgic and Grassroots Mutual Aid in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower Daniel D. Clausen
“Trees are better than stone”: Vital Commemoration in Octavia Butler’s Parable NovelsMatt Burkhart 
California Dreaming: Reading the Ski Film as Cli-FiKevin Maier
REVIEWS 
Antonia Castañeda and Clara Lomas, Writing/Righting History: Twenty-Five Years of Hispanic Literary HeritageErin Murrah-Mandril
Jim Hoy, My Flint Hills: Observations and Reminiscences from America’s Last Tallgrass PrairieTimothy A. Schuler
Arnold Krupat, Changed Forever: American Boarding-School Literature, Volume 2Lydia Presley

Spring 2022 (WAL 57.1)

ESSAYS 
Learning to Fly-Cast: Icarus and Myth in Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through ItStephen B. Dobranski
“Taken from Their Self-found Paths”: Captivity and Creation in Mary Hallock Foote’s Idaho FictionQuinn Grover
The Parthian Legacy: Irish Catholicism and Remaking Identity in Willa Cather’s My Mortal EnemyVera R. Foley
REVIEWS 
John N. Maclean, Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a RiverO. Alan Weltzien
Xabier Irujo and Iñaki Arrieta Baro, eds. Visions of a Basque American Westerner: International Perspectives on the Writings of Frank BergonMichael Kowalewski
Ryanne Pilgeram, Pushed Out: Contested Development and Rural Gentrification in the US WestJennifer K. Ladino
Erin Flanagan, Deer SeasonJoshua Doležal
Mary Stoecklein, Native America Mystery Writing: Indigenous InvestigationsJessica Rios
Gary Eller, True NorthHank Nuwer

Summer 2022 (WAL 57.2)

Special Issue: Emerging Writers
Guest Edited by Surabhi Balachander and Jillian Moore

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Personal and Pedagogical Perspectives Surabhi Balachander & Jillian Moore
ESSAYS 
Talking Tacos: Borderlands Culinary Rhetoric in A Taco TestimonyAlyssa Revels
“Don’t leave out the cowboys!”: Black Urban Cowboydom and didactic Afrofuturist Countermemories in Ghetto Cowboy (2011) and Concrete Cowboy (2021)Tracey Salisbury and Stefan Rabitsch
Reimagining the West in/and the First-Year Writing CourseSarah Jane Kerwin
“Asian American and Pacific Islander” Studies in Boston and Hilo: Student Activism, Radical Imaginings, and Critical Ethnic StudiesLeanne Day
Perfectly Designed for Connections: Zine Making in Denver SheltersAlison Turner
A Report on the Living West as Feminists ProjectZainab Abdali
Peregrination 2036Mika Kennedy
Afterword: Precarity, Pedagogy, and the PublicKrista Comer
REVIEWS 
Rafael Acosta Morales, Drug Lords, Cowboys, and Desperadoes: Violent Myths of the U.S.-Mexico FrontierCordelia E. Barrera
Curtis Bradley Vickers, This Here Is Devil’s Work: A NovelJeffrey Chisum
Mary Emerick, The Last Layer of the Ocean: Kayaking through Love and Loss on Alaska’s Wild CoastSjana Schanning
David Horgan. Helmi’s Shadow: A Journey of Survival from Russia to East Asia to the American WestDavid Rio
Maximilian Werner, Wolves, Grizzlies, and Greenhorns: Death & Coexistence in the American WestDan Aadland
Astrid Haas, Lone Star Vistas: Travel Writing on Texas, 1821-1861Jennifer Dawes
Patrick J. Mahoney, Recovering an Irish Voice from the American Frontier: The Prose Writings of Eoin Ua CathailJill Brady Hampton
Arnold Krupat, Boarding School Voices: Carlisle Indian School Students SpeakSusan D. Rose
Jane Hafen, Help Indians Help Themselves: The Later Writing of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša)Julianne Newmark

Fall 2022 (WAL 57.3)

 ESSAYS 
Fraught Prospects: California Landscape Poetry During and After the Gold RushCaroline Gelmi 
Necro-Settler Coloniality in Texan Mythology and Identity: Forgetting the AlamoChaney Hill
“Theirs is a kind of ecological esthetics”: Three Mountain Poems by Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and Philip WhalenTodd Giles
REVIEWS 
Lisa Tatonetti, Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis MasculinitiesTereza M. Szeghi
Estella Gonzalez, Chola SalvationJuan-Danniel Hernandez
Bintrim, Timothy W., James A. Jaap, and Kimberly Vanderlaan, eds.,
Willa Cather’s Pittsburgh: Cather Studies		Elizabeth Turner 
Mary Clearman Blew, Waltzing Montana: A NovelRandi Lynn Tanglen
Sullivan, Shannon, Ed. Thinking the US South: Contemporary Philosophy from Southern PerspectivesCristina Hernández Oliver
John G. Neihardt, Eagle Voice Remembers: An Authentic Tale of the Old Sioux WorldSam Stoeltje
Steven Wingate, The Leave-TakersRebecca Paredes 
Miriam C. Brown Spiers, Encountering the Sovereign Other: Indigenous Science FictionSara L. Spurgeon
Oscar Mancinas, To Live and Die in El ValleSophia Martinez-Abbud
Mark Rifkin, Speaking for the People: Native Writing and the Question of Political FormCaitlin Simmons

Winter 2023 (WAL 57.4)

ESSAYS
Mapping Intergenerational Diné Beauty: Reading Hózhǫ́ in the Poetry of Tacey M. AtsittyMichael P. Taylor and
Elena Arana
“Do the Right Thing Always”: Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Global Pandemics of 1918 and 2020Amy Fatzinger
Dao Strom’s Grass Roof, Tin Roof as Settler Refugee CritiqueMichele Janette
REVIEWS
Molly P. Rozum, Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian PrairiesTracy Sanford Tucker
Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester, eds., Viva Texas Rivers! Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied WaterwaysChaney Hill
Jada Ach, Sand, Water, Salt: Managing the Elements in Literature of the American WestJenna Gersie
Mary Pat Brady, Scales of Captivity: Racial Capitalism and the Latinx ChildSarah J. Ropp
Blake Allmendinger, Geographic Personas: Self-Transformation and Performance in the American WestChristine Bold
Lawrence W. Gross, Native American RhetoricsDanielle Donelson
José F. Aranda Jr., The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848–1948Sandra Dahlberg
Lee Bergthold, The Deadliest ShortcutThomas J. Lyon
Melissa J. Homestead, The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith LewisJada Ach
Ladette Randolph, Private Way: A NovelManish Pandey

Spring 2023 (WAL 58.1) 

ESSAYS
Lost in the New West: Performing Western Identity in Thomas McGuane’s Deadrock Novels Mark Asquith
Shackle-Breakers and Adventure-Makers: Fantasies of the U.S. West at Oregon Health & Science University Pamela Pierce
Daring to Dream: Contextualizing B. M. Bower’s The Eagle’s Wing with Colorado River Compact HistoryPatricia J. Rettig
REVIEWS
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, Cattle Country: Livestock in the Cultural ImaginationTom Hertweck
John Joseph Mathews, Our Osage Hills: Toward an Osage Ecology and Tribalography of the Early Twentieth Century, ed. by Michael SnyderSheldon Yeakley
Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured LandO. Alan Weltzien
Anna M. Nogar and A. Gabriel Meléndez, El feliz ingenio neomexicano: Felipe M. Chacón and Poesía y prosaJuan M. Gallegos
Tracy Daugherty, 148 Charles Street: A NovelMax Frazier
Gregory Smoak, Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American WestEmily Gowen
Michael P. Branch, On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure CancerHal Crimmel
Mary Dartt, On the Plains, and Among the Peaks, or, How Mrs. Maxwell Made Her Natural History CollectionErica Hannickel
Barbara Schmitz, Sundown at Faith RegionalMark Sanders
Cordelia E. Barrera, The Haunted Southwest: Towards an Ethics of Place in Borderlands LiteratureBailey Moorhead
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    Founded in 1965, the Western Literature Association (WLA) is a non-profit, scholarly association that promotes the study of the diverse literature and cultures of the North American West, past and present.

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