A singular focus on sports writing for an edition of Prairie Schooner has led to a broader anthology that challenges traditional ideas and questions the power structures that athletics enforce.

Published by University of Nebraska Press, “Bodies Built for Game: The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Sports Writing,” was curated by Natalie Diaz, associate professor of English at Arizona State University.

Based at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Prairie Schooner is one of the oldest literary magazines in the nation. The publication is led by Kwame Dawes, a world-renowned poet who serves as Prairie Schooner’s Glenna Luschei Editor-in-Chief. The magazine is published in cooperation with University of Nebraska Press and the Creative Writing Program of the university’s Department of English.

Diaz also served as curator of Prairie Schooner’s winter 2015 edition, which included nearly 200 pages of poems, essays and stories related to athletics. After Prairie Schooner went to press, Diaz realized there was large amount of strong content on the cutting room floor, which led to the expanded anthology.

The book features contributions from a group of diverse writers, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Fatimah Asghar, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Louise Erdrich, Toni Jensen, Ada Limon, Tommy Orange, Claudia Rankine, Danez Smith and Maya Washington.

Linking iconic athletic moments — from the Roman Colosseum and Jesse Owens’ gold medal dominance of the 1936 Olympics to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 1968 Olympic protest and Colin Kaepernick’s recent fallout — the book shows how sports have always been central to the movements of the nation-state and the people who resist it.

Diaz is also the author of “When My Brother Was an Aztec” and of the forthcoming book “Post-Colonial Love Poem.”

Learn more about “Bodies Built for the Game.”

Natalie Diaz, associate professor of English and the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University, is the author of the new anthology [“Bodies Built for Game: The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Sports Writing.”](

The book, which was published in October 2019 by University of Nebraska Press, brings together poems, essays and stories that challenge the traditional ideas of sports and bring into question the power structures that athletics enforce.

What is it that drives us to athletics? What is it that makes us break down our own bodies or the bodies of others as we root for these unnatural and performed victories?

Sports has always been central to the movements of both the nation-state and the people who resist that nation-state. Think of the Roman Colosseum, Jesse Owen’s four gold-metal victories in the 1936 Nazi Olympics, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s protest at the 1968 Olympics and the fallout Colin Kaepernick suffered as a result of his recent protest on the sidelines of an NFL game. In sports, the body and the mind are the most dangerous because they are allowed to be unified as one energy.

The book features contributions from a group of diverse writers, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Fatimah Asghar, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Louise Erdrich, Toni Jensen, Ada Limon, Tommy Orange, Claudia Rankine, Danez Smith and Maya Washington.

Diaz is also the author of “When My Brother Was an Aztech” and of the forthcoming book “Post Colonial Love Poem.”

Prairie Schooner was the source for the book. Prairie Schooner is one of the oldest literary magazines in the nation and is based on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s campus. The magazine is published in cooperation with University of Nebraska Press and the Creative Writing Program of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department.

For more information on her new book, visit the University of Nebraska Press website.