Book Series Guide

Author guide

Brandon Hobson Books in Order

Brandon Hobson is a Cherokee writer of literary fiction, experimental fiction, and middle-grade fiction. His novels often explore Cherokee identity, family, grief, displacement, trauma, and the supernatural. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University and the Institute of American Indian Arts. His novel Where the Dead Sit Talking was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, and he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022.

literary fictionexperimental fictionindigenous literaturemiddle-grade fiction

Catalog record updated .

Brandon Hobson's Newest Book

Cover of The Devil Is a Southpaw

The Devil Is a Southpaw

novel · First published 2025

A haunting, unforgettable novel of obsession, pride, and forgiveness, exploring the friendship and rivalry between two gifted boys in harrowing circumstances, from the acclaimed writer of The Removed Milton Muleborn has envied Matthew Echota, a talented Cherokee artist, ever since they were locked up together in a dangerous juvenile detention center in the late 1980s. Until Matthew escaped, that is. A novel within a novel, we read here Milton’s dark, sometimes comic, and possibly unreliable account of the story of their childhood even as, years later, he remains jealous of Matthew’s extraordinary abilities and unlikely success. Milton reveals secrets about their friendship, their families, and their nightmarish, surreal, experience of imprisonment. In revisiting the past, he explores the echoing traumas of incarceration and pride. Filled with Brandon Hobson’s swirling yet visceral writing, and punctuated with original artwork, The Devil Is a Southpaw is an ambitious, elegant, and propulsive novel in the spirit of Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel García Márquez.

Not sure where to begin?

Start with one of these

Cover of Where the Dead Sit Talking

Where the Dead Sit Talking

A representative and widely acclaimed novel, and the work that brought Hobson national recognition as a National Book Award finalist.

Cover of The Storyteller

The Storyteller

A strong entry point for readers seeking Hobson's middle-grade fiction and Cherokee-centered storytelling.

Outside the series

Bibliography by category

Novels (7)
  1. The Levitationist

    novella · 2005

  2. Deep Ellum

    novella · 2014

    "DEEP ELLUM is a novel of beauty and power, about family and transcending family, lives unwinding even as they tangle together. Brandon Hobson writes luminescent prose of hard-edged, quiet intensity. His narrator owns a voice at once…

  3. Desolation of Avenues Untold

    novel · 2015

  4. Where the Dead Sit Talking

    novel · 2018

    "A spare, lyrical Native American coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s. With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and…

  5. The Removed

    novel · 2021

    A novel "about a [Cherokee] family's reckoning with loss and injustice...spirited, droll, and as quietly devastating as rain lifting from earth to sky" (Tommy Orange, New York Times–bestselling author of There, There). Steeped in Cherokee…

  6. The Storyteller

    novel · 2023

  7. The Devil Is a Southpaw

    novel · 2025

    A haunting, unforgettable novel of obsession, pride, and forgiveness, exploring the friendship and rivalry between two gifted boys in harrowing circumstances, from the acclaimed writer of The Removed Milton Muleborn has envied Matthew…

Frequently asked questions about Brandon Hobson

What is Brandon Hobson’s cultural identity and background?

Brandon Hobson is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oklahoma and earned a PhD in creative writing from Oklahoma State University.

Sources: english.nmsu.edu (opens in a new tab)newsroom.nmsu.edu (opens in a new tab)

What does Brandon Hobson do professionally?

Hobson is a fiction writer and creative-writing professor. He teaches at New Mexico State University and in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Sources: nationalbook.org (opens in a new tab)iaia.edu (opens in a new tab)

What influences Brandon Hobson’s writing?

Hobson has said that Cherokee traditional stories, Native history, and contemporary violence against Native people inform his fiction. Generational trauma, grief, healing, and Cherokee identity are recurring concerns in his work.

Sources: newsroom.nmsu.edu (opens in a new tab)okcu.edu (opens in a new tab)

What awards and honors has Brandon Hobson received?

His fiction has won a Pushcart Prize and the Reading the West Book Award, and Where the Dead Sit Talking was a 2018 National Book Award finalist. He also received the 2022 Petree College Distinguished Alumni Award from Oklahoma City University and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Sources: english.nmsu.edu (opens in a new tab)nationalbook.org (opens in a new tab)okcu.edu (opens in a new tab)

How has Brandon Hobson contributed to Native literary representation?

Hobson has centered Cherokee history, folklore, and contemporary Native experiences in nationally recognized fiction. Oklahoma City University has described his novels and stories as giving voice to Native American and American histories and lives that are often unheard.

Sources: okcu.edu (opens in a new tab)nationalbook.org (opens in a new tab)