Chelsea T. Hicks Books In Order

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Chelsea T. Hicks is a published American author.

In addition to being a writer of fiction, Hicks is also a songwriter. She hails from Tulsa and attended UC Davis, where she was able to earn an MA. She then went on to the Institute of American Indian Arts and earned her MFA. She studied at Wazahazhe ie for her iko (which means ‘grandmother’), and intended to go back to Oklahoma as a Tulsa Artist Fellow in 2022, offering up creative writing workshops for writers who use Indigenous languages.

She studied Wazhazhe ie with members of her tribal district, Waxakaoli. Chelsea is also part of the Tsizho Washtake, connected through her father Brian. In Wazhazhe ie she is known as Xhuedoi, which means ‘Looking to the Eagle’. Chelsea has worked to center language study in her writing, which has let her address trends of healing as well as cultural revitalization for modern Natives in her writing.

A Calm and Normal Heart is a 2022 book by Chelsea T. Hicks. If you have been looking for an interesting collection of stories to check out, this is a great book for you.

Whether it’s in the state of California or in Oklahoma, the protagonists of this book work in different areas. From investigators to adventurers to homesteaders, they look for new places that they can call their own while inside of a nation which they belong to, but not entirely. Chelsea belongs to the Osage tribe and so her stories are driven by an overlooked diaspora in the United States of young Native people.

Through unique stories such as ‘Moot Point’, ‘The Oklahoma Ocean’, and ‘Goodbye Pizza in Los Angeles’, the lifestyle of the digital age and iPhones meets ancestral connection, making relationships stronger or ending up pushing people apart. Meanwhile, generational trauma haunts the paths of certain individuals.

Partnerships that have been broken up and poly-amorous desire shows a fraught era of modern love, despite the fact that old ways keep on influencing how different people chooses to assess compatibility. In ‘THNXX by Alcatraz’, an indigenous students discovers that they are completely alone on the campus for Thanksgiving break, taking on racial differences and getting a deeper understanding of this national holiday.

Different stories in this book focus on women responding to abuse in the family as well as patriarchal conditioning and transcending it. Going back in time, ‘A Fresh Start Ruined’ goes inside of the life of Florence. She is an Osage woman who is trying to hide her origins while attempting to social climb in Oklahoma in the middle of the century. Meanwhile, in ‘House of RGB’, the main character in this story is a woman who settles down to live in a house of her own, at last getting some distance from the pattern that she has of looking for safety in men thanks to the assistance of a variety of ancestral visitations.

The characters in this collection of stories are constantly in a complicated terrain and one that is sometimes unreliable for them. Whether they are in between jobs, semesters at college, or making their way on the road to attend weddings and tribal dances, or getting out of bad homes or finding a new relationship, the author shares their stories with her own unique imaginative touch and her signature wry humor to show the Native experience in an all new way. Enlightening and original, check out A Calm and Normal Heart to experience this author’s voice for yourself.