Eleven westerns that break all the rules

Claudia Cravens grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has a BA in Literature from Bard College and is a graduate of Catapult's Twelve-Month Novel Generator.

Lucky Red is her first novel.

At Publishers Weekly Cravens tagged eleven "subversive works [in which] people who are often denied agency in traditional westerns—women, people of color, LGBTQ people—insist on telling their own stories." One title on the list:

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin

Sometimes, the best thing an author can do for an underrepresented character is to let them have a rip-roaring, violent, thrilling adventure all their own. The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is exactly this: an action-packed tale of magic, star-crossed lovers, and much-needed revenge starring Ming, the orphaned child of Chinese immigrants. Raised as a deadly enforcer in a California crime syndicate, Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a railroad magnate. Soon after, Ada is kidnapped by her father’s henchmen and Ming is pressed into service on the Central Pacific Railroad. Ming partners up with the prophet, a blind clairvoyant, and they set out to rescue Ada and exact revenge. Lin’s novel not only rejects stereotypes of Chinese immigrants as anonymous, passive workers, it pushes back hard with an explosively inventive tale.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue