"This deeply textured, sensual collection more than accomplishes Olivas’s self-proclaimed task of rendering the beauty and complexity of Mexican and Mexican American culture in its fabulist, folkloric stories." In 2011, the University of Arizona Press published Olivas's first novel, The Book of Want. The novel is written in the magical realist tradition but also includes postmodern elements such as sections where characters are interviewed about being in the novel itself, text messages, and a short play. Between 2003 and 2010, the Los Angeles Times published six of Olivas's children's stories. One of those stories, "Benjamin and the Word," was republished by Arte Público Press in 2005 as a bilingual picture book. The story revolves around a boy named Benjamin who is Chicano and Jewish and who suffers bigoted taunts on the schoolyard. Work as editor Olivas edited Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press, 2008), where he brought together sixty years of Los Angeles fiction by Latino writers. The volume collected some of the best-known Latino writers Luis Alberto Urrea, Helena María Viramontes, Luis Rodriguez, Kathleen Alcalá and John Rechy, and also introduced writers at the beginning of their careers Melinda Palacio, Manuel Muñoz, Salvador Plascencia and Reyna Grande. In 2016, Tía Chucha Press released The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles which Olivas co-edited with Neelanjana Banerjee and Ruben J. Rodriguez. The anthology includes a wide range of poetry by including writers Dana Gioia, Ruben Martinez, Wanda Coleman, Holly Prado. In 2023, Olivas was named co-editor of the new book series from the University of Nevada Press, The New Oeste: Literatura Latinx of the American West in the 21st century. The co-editor is the poet, León Salvatierra. Non-fiction On June 1, 2014, San Diego State University Press published Olivas's first nonfiction book, Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature through Essays and Interviews. The volume brings together essays that have appeared in The New York Times, La Bloga, Jewish Journal, California Lawyer, and other publications, that address topics from the Mexican-American experience to the Holocaust. The book also includes 28 interviews that Olivas conducted over the years with Latino/a writers including Daniel Alarcón, Gustavo Arellano, Richard Blanco, Sandra Cisneros, Héctor Tobar, Luis Alberto Urrea, Justin Torres, Reyna Grande, and Helena María Viramontes. Poetry In November 2017, Olivas published his first book of poems, Crossing the