TULSA LITFEST 2025
APRIL 24 - APRIL 27, 2025 | TULSA, OK
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship is proud to support Tulsa LitFest 2025 through a series of public programs that highlight the creative voices of our awardees and special guests. This year’s lineup features dynamic conversations and screenings that explore themes of justice, identity, and cultural expression—taking place at Tulsa Artist Fellowship Flagship and in venues across Tulsa.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship awardee Kashona Notah will be featured during the Opening Night Mixer on Thursday, April 24, at 8:30 PM at Fassler Hall (304 S Elgin Ave). Awardee Colleen Thurston has organized two timely events for this year’s festival: a screening and discussion of The Cost of Inheritance with director Yoruba Richen on Saturday, April 26 at 6:00 PM at OSU-Tulsa North Hall Auditorium (700 N Greenwood Ave) and Emerging Voices in Native Cinema, where she will moderate a panel with Shea Vassar, Paris Burris, and Katie Hoffman-Faulk on Sunday, April 27 at 2 PM at Flagship (112 N. Boston Ave).
In conjunction with The Cost of Inheritance, visiting filmmaker Yoruba Richen will join Reginald Dwayne Betts for a Coffee Talk on Sunday, April 27, at 10:00 AM at Fulton Street Books & Coffee (21 N Greenwood Ave). Later that day, Richen’s film American Coup will screen at 5:00 PM at OSU-Tulsa as the festival’s encore event.
FEATURED EVENT SCHEDULE
April 24: Tulsa LitFest Opening Night Mixer (Readings & Celebration)
April 26: The Cost of Inheritance (Film Screening & Discussion)
April 27: Emerging Voices in Native Cinema (Panel Discussion)
April 27: Coffee Talk with Yoruba Richen + Reginald Dwayne Betts (Discussion)
April 27: LitFest Encore Event: American Coup by Yoruba Richen (Film Screening)
See below for additional details on each event.
TULSA LITFEST OPENING NIGHT MIXER
THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2025 | 8:30 – 10:30 PM
Fassler Hall
304 S Elgin Ave, Tulsa, OK 74120
Free | RSVP Here
Following the Opening Night Reading, hosts Eric Howerton (Center for Poets and Writers, OSU) and Tulsa Artist Fellow alum Quraysh Ali Lansana (TriCity Collective, TU) invite you to a night of merriment, food, drink and friends at Fassler Hall. This year marks the 8th annual Tulsa LitFest, and to celebrate the freeing power of storytelling and writing in all forms, join us, mingle, and enjoy the words of Tulsa Artist Fellow fiction-writer Kashona Notah and poet Claire Campo.
Kashona Notah is a writer who grew up on the West Side of San Bernardino, California. He is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Hopwood Award for Short Fiction, the Hopwood Award for Nonfiction, the Mary Steinbeck Dekker Award, the Louis Sudler Prize, and the National Native Media Award for Environmental Coverage. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Yellow Medicine Review, MQR Online, and various other publications. Notah is Iñupiaq and was raised since birth within a Diné family through his late adoptive father. At 27, after almost ten years in the workforce and receiving his GED from San Bernardino Adult School, Notah attended college for the first time. He now holds a BA in English with a minor in Native American Studies from Stanford University, and an MFA in prose from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. He currently lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he is a 2024-2026 Tulsa Artist Fellow.
Claire Campo is an actor, poet, teaching artist, and co-founder of Poetic Justice, an innovative program aimed at facilitating literacy and poetry workshops within carceral settings. They currently serve on the Living Arts spoken word committee. Their short film i love you like science, received the Linklater Award for Best Dialogue at Austin Arthouse Film Festival. They have been featured on TV shows such as The Gifted on Fox, Tyler Perry’s The Haves and the Have Nots and their forthcoming feature film Carnation, has been named one of Australia’s Top 100 most anticipated films of 2025. Their poetry has been published in This Land Press, Emerge Magazine, New Words Press and Super Present Magazine. They are of Mohawk, French, and Dutch descent, Collins is deeply invested in the cultural preservation and revitalization of their indigenous heritage as a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River.
Dr. Eric Howerton received his PhD from the University of Houston (Creative Writing and Literature), an MFA in Fiction from the Pennsylvania State University, and bachelor’s degrees in English/Philosophy and Psychology from the University of New Mexico. At OSU, Dr. Howerton teaches technical writing, literature, creative writing, and Honors composition courses on food studies and invented intelligences. He is also involved in teaching English reading and writing courses at the Payne County Jail, and he has worked with the Edmon Low Library to generate and edit open-source textbooks. Dr. Howerton’s stories, flash fictions, restaurant reviews, book reviews, poems, magazine features, and editorials have been published widely in print and online. Dr. Howerton’s short story Go Down, Diller was recently co-adapted into a screenplay of the same name, and the film (directed by Dr. Andrew Bateman of CU Denver) will be submitted to festivals in the second half of 2024.
Quraysh Ali Lansana is the author of nine poetry books, three textbooks, three children’s books, and editor of eight anthologies. A Tulsa Artist Fellowship alum, he currently serves as an adjunct professor at Oklahoma State University–Tulsa and Curriculum Auditor for Tulsa Public Schools. He previously directed the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University and taught at both the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The Juilliard School. His recent books include the skin of dreams: new & collected poems, The Whiskey of Our Discontent, and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop. Lansana is a Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today and Co-Executive Producer of Focus: Black Oklahoma, a monthly public radio program covering issues impacting Black communities across the state. He is a 2022 Emmy Award winner for his work on the OETA documentary Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.
THE COST OF INHERITANCE (FILM SCREENING & DISCUSSION)
Saturday, April 26
6:00 – 9:00 PM
5:30 PM Doors Open
6:00 - 8:00 PM Screening & Discussion
8:00 - 9:00 PM Reception
OSU-Tulsa North Hall Auditorium
700 N Greenwood Ave, Tulsa, OK 74106
Free | RSVP Here [link]
Donations to Justice for Greenwood accepted at the door
Join us for a special screening of America ReFramed's The Cost of Inheritance (2024, 56 min) by director Yoruba Richen, a feature-length documentary exploring the complex issue of reparations in the U.S. Through personal stories, historical insight, and community perspectives, the film examines systemic inequities and racial conciliation with clarity and care.
Preceded by the short documentary, Descended from The Promised Land: The Legacy of Black Wall Street (Dir. Nailah Jefferson, 2021, 23 min), rooted in Tulsa’s own history and legacy.
Presented in partnership with LitFest, Tulsa Artist Fellowship and Tulsa Film Collective, Dreamland Tulsa, with support from Justice for Greenwood.
A discussion with director Yoruba Richen and local Reparative Justice advocates will follow.
Yoruba Richen is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on Netflix, MSNBC, FX/Hulu, HBO, and PBS. Her latest film, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, premiered at Tribeca, won a Peabody Award, and is streaming on Peacock. Other recent titles include the Emmy-nominated American Reckoning, How It Feels to Be Free, The Sit In, and Green Book: Guide to Freedom. She directed episodes of Black and Missing (HBO) and High on the Hog (Netflix), and her film The Killing of Breonna Taylor won an NAACP Image Award (Hulu). Earlier films The New Black and Promised Land won multiple festival awards and aired on Independent Lens and P.O.V. A Guggenheim and Fulbright fellow, Yoruba is also a Sundance Fellow and recipient of awards from Tribeca and Chicken & Egg. She directs the Documentary Program at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and founded Promise Land Films, which produces work exploring race, space, and power.
EMERGING VOICES IN NATIVE CINEMA
Sunday, April 27
2:00 – 4:00 PM
Tulsa Artist Fellowship – Flagship
112 N Boston Ave, Tulsa, OK 74103
Free | RSVP Here
Light snacks and beverages provided
Oklahoma is home to a thriving Native film scene. This engaging panel features three Indigenous filmmakers—Shea Vassar Gomez (Cherokee), Paris Burris (Chickasaw), and Katie Hoffman-Faulk (Cherokee/Shawnee)—sharing their current projects, past work, and creative practices.
Co-presented by Tulsa Artist Fellowship, the panel is curated and moderated by Tulsa Artist Fellow Colleen Thurston as part of LitFest.
Shea Vassar (Cherokee) is a writer and comedian who is currently working on her first short film Julie Takes a Walk. She dabbles in various creative mediums to tell stories that utilize existentialism and dark humor to assess Indigenous diaspora, connection to land, generational trauma, and the irony of being alive. She has also worked as a freelance journalist for the last seven years. Shea’s bylines have been featured by publications like Men’s Health, Roger Ebert, and Slate and she is a frequent guest on the NPR podcast, Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Paris Burris is a filmmaker and film programmer based in Oklahoma City. She serves as the Short Film Programmer for deadCenter Film Festival, Oklahoma’s largest and only Oscar®-qualifying film festival, and is the founder of Femme Film, a monthly series dedicated to showcasing films made by femmes for free to the Oklahoma community. Paris shares her insights on Indigenous media through the Reel Indigenous Podcast and is passionate about creating independent films with her friends. She is also dedicated to discovering and sharing underseen films with wider audiences. A proud citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, Paris is deeply committed to amplifying diverse voices in film.
Katie Hoffman-Faulk is an Oklahoma-based filmmaker and producer who specializes in creating strong, relatable, female-centric stories, inspired primarily by her life in Oklahoma. She co-wrote the Native short Western Skies: Toohoom-pai-ahv (The Southern Paiute Sky) and has written and directed two short films. Her first feature, Push County (currently in development) is a crime-thriller, set in Choctaw Nation, OK. She is an enrolled citizen of Cherokee Nation with Shawnee and Delaware ancestry.
Colleen Thurston is a filmmaker and film curator from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Colleen has produced for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, PBS, and federal, tribal and non profit organizations. Her work has screened at international film festivals and broadcast nationwide and has received support from Firelight Media, the Sundance Institute, Patagonia, the Redford Center and Creative Capital. Her feature film documentary about the cycle of displacement from resource extraction and the fate of Oklahoma’s Kiamichi River, Drowned Land, recently premiered at the 2025 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital, and held state premieres in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California as part of Color Congress’ Elev8Docs Marketing Experiment. Colleen is the founder of the Indigenous Moving Image Archive project, and has curated film programs for institutions such as the Momentary (Bentonville, AR), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), UCLA Film and Television Archives and Vidiots (Los Angeles, CA) and numerous film festivals. Colleen is the project producer for the Indigenous video series Native Lens (Rocky Mountain PBS / KSUT Tribal Radio), and a senior programmer for Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Colleen is a 2024-25 International Documentary Association Fellow and a 2025-2027 Tulsa Artist Fellow. She is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
VISITOR EXPERIENCE
304 S Elgin Ave, Tulsa, OK 74120
Fassler Hall offers free parking, and street parking is free after 5pm on weekdays and on weekends. The venue is wheelchair accessible.
OSU-Tulsa North Hall Auditorium
700 N Greenwood Ave, Tulsa, OK 74106 (where Greenwood curves into E. John Hope Franklin Blvd N.)
Free and accessible parking is available in Lot E, near North Hall. The venue is fully accessible, with wheelchair seating on the lower level and a lift to the stage.
Located at 21 N Greenwood Ave, Tulsa, OK 74120
Fulton Street Books is wheelchair accessible. Accessible street parking is free after 5pm on weekdays and on weekends.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship – Flagship
Located at 112 N Boston Ave, Tulsa, OK 74103
Public hours: Thursday–Friday from 12–6 PM, Saturdays, 11 AM–3 PM
The gallery accommodates wheelchairs and strollers. Variable seating is provided, along with areas for distanced standing and wheelchairs. Family-scale private washrooms are available to support visitors with disabilities and caregivers who need access to increased square footage and changing tables.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship strives to provide a welcoming and accessible experience. All exhibitions and events are free, documented, and archived.
ABOUT LITFEST TULSA
Tulsa LitFest brings together diverse literary artists and writers to collaborate and inspire, enriching the Tulsa community. The free festival includes events ranging from open mic nights and live readings to a small press book fair and a jazz show, presented in a variety of bookstores, taprooms and museums near downtown. Tulsa LitFest is presented by the Center for Poets and Writers at OSU-Tulsa, Whitty Books, Tri-City Collective, and Fulton Street Books and Coffee and is supported by Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Learn more.
ABOUT ERS
Dreamland Tulsa brings stories centering Black and Brown experiences of joy, liberation, transformation, and hope to the Tulsa community. Inspired by the original Dreamland Theatre—an integrated cultural hub on historic Black Wall Street—Dreamland works in collaboration with descendants of John and Loula Williams to build programming that honors Greenwood’s legacy of community care and imagination. Through film and media, Dreamland fosters shared visions for a thriving, just future.
Tulsa Film Collective (TFC) is dedicated to nurturing Tulsa's filmmaker community through dynamic community events and skill-enhancing workshops. Founded in 2018, TFC is committed to sharing the love and appreciation of film, strengthening connections, and sustaining the magic of movie-making in Tulsa.
Justice for Greenwood is a network of volunteers, advocates, attorneys, academics, experts, Massacre Survivors, Descendants, & others agitating for reparations & justice on behalf of Survivors and Descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Our mission is to secure justice and reparations for the Greenwood community and Diaspora through direct services, public education, and advocacy. Our work aims to revitalize the Greenwood community and to address the major areas of racial inequality and injustice directly caused by the Massacre: Health, Education, Real Estate, and Business. There is no clearer, no uglier example of racial injustice and anti-Black racial terror (or violence) in America’s history than the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Just as horrendous as the white mob that attacked and entirely destroyed a peaceful, prosperous Black community in Tulsa, is that America intentionally denied that it happened and covered it up for nearly 100 years. Despite the undisputed facts around the Massacre and the generational damage that it caused, there has not been any constructive, tangible action taken to address and repair the catastrophic harm that it caused. We at Justice for Greenwood are building a movement to change all of that.
ABOUT TULSA ARTIST FELLOWSHIP
Established in 2015, Tulsa Artist Fellowship was created as a place-based initiative by the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) that addresses pressing challenges faced by contemporary artists and arts workers living in and joining Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa Artist Fellowship believes the arts are critical to advancing cultural citizenship and supports community-invested practitioners who intentionally engage with our city.