On this episode of "West Texas Talk," Elise Pepple sits down with Lannan Resident Ladan Osman to talk about familial influence and heritage in her writing.
Osman is currently working on Exiles of Eden, a book of poetry, essays and photos that will be published by Coffee House Press in 2019. The work will explore different forms of exile rooted in the story of Adam and Eve. In this interview, Osman explains how studying isolation in this biblical story deepens understanding of the plight of refugees, immigrants, and exiles.
Ladan Osman was born in Somalia. She earned a BA at Otterbein College and an MFA at the University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center for Writers. Her chapbook, Ordinary Heaven, appears in Seven New Generation African Poets (Slapering Hol Press, 2014). Her full-length collection The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (University of Nebraska Press, 2015) won the Sillerman First Book Prize. Her work has appeared in Apogee, The Normal School, Prairie Schooner, Transition Magazine, and Waxwing.
