Todd Fuller

Todd Fuller teaches courses in creative writing and Native American literatures at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His academic work focuses on the evolution of poetry in the twin territories (Indian and Oklahoma Territories), and his creative work (poetry and creative non-fiction) considers tensions of conciliation, in various moments of identity upheaval.  

His first book, 60 Feet Six Inches and Other Distances from Home: the (Baseball) Life of Mose YellowHorse, examines the life of the first-full-blood Native to play in Major League Baseball (1921-22). A non-traditional, mixed-genre biography of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, YellowHorse’s story isolates intersections of race in the 1920s in the southern plains, deep south, eastern seaboard, and west coast. YellowHorse emerges as an heroic, yet conflicted, historical figure. Some of the individual pieces from the book first appeared in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Crazyhorse, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, South Dakota Review, and Weber Studies.

Fuller’s first poetry collection, To the Disappearance, explores narratives of appearance and disappearance, sometimes both (at the same time), especially in Native (and specifically Pawnee) communities, and how such stories and images agitate one another. Work from this collection was first published in Apalachee Review, Barnwood Magazine, Cimarron Review, New York Quarterly, Poet Lore, Red Earth Review, Third Coast, Truck, and Wicazo Sa Review.

Fuller’s current projects focus on a blend of academic and creative activities. In October of 2018, he co-curated, with Dr. Crag Hill (OU College of Education), the Western History Collections’ exhibition, “Red Dust Oklahoma: a Poetic History.” The exhibition focused on the evolution of Oklahoma poetry from pre-statehood to 1941. This project was an outgrowth of another current project, Level Land: Poems for and about the I35 Corridor. The “Red Dust” project also spawned several activities, including Red Dust Women: Voices from the Southern Plains (1835 -1941), which brings together women authors who published abundantly in literary journals, but, for whatever reason, never published single-author poetry collections; Red Dust Oil: Poetic Dialogs from the Crude (1900-1941), examines creative expressions centered on extractive industries, including the petroleum industry in Oklahoma; Oklahoma Manner: a Poetic History (1835 -1941) delves into the literary history of Oklahoma poetry; and, a collection of Lynn Riggs’ new and selected poems, tentatively titled, Mirage: Not Only Hamlet: The Poetry of Lynn Riggs. The original “Red Dust” exhibition is scheduled to show at the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center from November 2019 to February 2020.

Fuller is also working on a single-author collection, Versus / Verses, through which he meditates on various moments of competition in the West, especially the United States. Poems from this book have been published in Dragon Poet Review, The Eloquent Poem, Malpais Review, The Matador Review, and Truck, to date.

A collaborative project currently underway with Quinn Carver Johnson (Hendrix College), Linear, was initiated in 2016 when Johnson, then a high school senior at Arkansas City, Kansas, wrote Fuller and suggested developing a collection based on Fuller’s poem, “An Index of First Lines,” which was first published in Apalachee Review and later in To the Disappearance. Since then, the two have written a 44-poem collection, of which a number of the pieces have been published in Boomer Lit Mag, The Broadkill Review, Dragon Poet Review, Flint Hills Review, and Red Earth Review.  

Prior to working at OU as the curator at the Western History Collections, and before that at the now-defunct Center for Research Program Development and Enrichment, Fuller served as the founding president of Pawnee Nation College (2004-2011). From 2000-2002, Fuller taught at Drake University as a Visiting Assistant Professor. 

To the Disappearance. Mongrel Empire Press, 2015.
60 Feet Six Inches and Other Distances from Home: the (Baseball) Life of Mose YellowHorse, Holy Cow! Press, 2002.