Oklahoma Book Award Winner Cullen Whisenhunt

🥇 Cullen Whisenhunt – Winner of the 2025 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry

Cullen Whisenhunt’s debut full‑length poetry collection, Until Air Itself Is Tinted (Turning Plow Press, 2024), has been honored with the 2025 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry 

With the discerning eye of a photographer, Whisenhunt captures overlooked moments in vivid detail—cranes and herons, leafy sidewalks, cypress “teeth”—weaving a tapestry of Oklahoma’s soul, nature, and memory. His poems offer a rich sensory world: “poems we can sink our teeth into,” grounded in elemental imagery and quiet observation 

Whisenhunt lives in southeastern Oklahoma and teaches at Eastern Oklahoma State College in McAlester. He also co-hosts local poetry readings and contributes to the literary community through Archive Serendipities and local writing events.

Whether rooted in gentle observation or layered with layered histories, Until Air Itself Is Tinted invites readers into an Oklahoma both intimate and elemental.