Buffalo Wallow Woman by Anna Lee Walters
Claire by Janet Campbell Hale
Almost Soup/Lazy Stitch by Louise Erdrich
the crow and the snake by Joy Harjo
Bush's Mourning Feast by Linda Hogan
Beading Lesson by Beth H. Piatote
Anna Lee Walters (born 1946) is an award-winning Pawnee/Otoe-Missouria author from Oklahoma.
Walters works at the Diné College in Arizona, where she directs the college press. She lives in Tsaile, Arizona with her husband Harry Walters. He is the former Director of the Museum at Diné College.
Her first novel, Ghost Singer (1994) is a two-level mystery: one relates to the suicide of researchers at the Smithsonian Institution, which is attributed to ghosts related to Indian artifact (archeology); the other is that of how American Indians understand their position related to their ancestry and culture. Turning the genre on its head, Walters "solves" only the second mystery.
Her short story collection, The Sun Is Not Merciful, won the Before Columbus Foundation 1985 American Book Award.
Buffalo Wallow Woman (PDF)
Janet Campbell Hale (born January 11, 1946, Riverside, California) is a Native American writer. Her father was a full-blood Coeur d'Alene, and her mother was of Kootenay, Cree and Irish descent.
In a sparse style that has been compared to Hemingway, Hale's work often explores issues of Native American identity and discusses poverty, abuse, and the condition of women in society. She wrote Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter (1993), which includes a discussion of the Native American experience as well as stories from her own life. She also wrote The Owl's Song (1974), The Jailing of Cecelia Capture (which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1985), Women on the Run (1999), and Custer Lives in Humboldt County & Other Poems (1978).
Janet Campbell Hale has taught at Northwest Indian College, Iowa State University, College of Illinois, and University of California at Santa Cruz, and has served as resident writer at University of Oregon and University of Washington. Hale currently lives on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in De Smet, Idaho.
Claire (PDF)
Louise Erdrich is an American author, writer of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe and Chippewa).
Erdrich is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance. In 2009, her novel The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. In November 2012, she received the National Book Award for Fiction for her novel The Round House. She was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction at the National Book Festival in September 2015. She is a 2013 recipient of the Alex Awards. She was married to author Michael Dorris and the two collaborated on a number of works. The couple separated in 1995.
She is also the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis that focuses on Native American literature and the Native community in the Twin Cities.
Almost Soup/Lazy Stitch (PDF)
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019.
The author of nine books of poetry, several plays and children's books, and a memoir, Crazy Brave, her many honors include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, a PEN USA Literary Award, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Writers’ Award, a Rasmuson US Artist Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Harjo is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.
the crow and the snake (PDF)
Linda K. Hogan (born July 16, 1947) is a poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's Writer in Residence. Hogan is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. She lives in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.
Hogan has published works in many different backgrounds and forms. Her concentration is on environmental themes as well Southeastern tribal histories and indigenous spirits and culture. She has acted as a consultant in bringing together Native tribal representatives and feminist themes, particularly allying them to her native ancestry. She strives to balance the perception of male and female power in Native American culture that was disrupted by the effects of the early Christian Americans. Her work, whether fiction or non-fiction, expresses an indigenous understanding of the world. She has written essays and poems on a variety of subjects, both fictional and nonfictional, biographical and from research. Hogan has also written historical novels. Her work studies the historical wrongs done to Native Americans and the American environment since the European colonization of North America.
Hogan married Pat Hogan and had children, Sandra Dawn Protector and Tanya Thunder Horse. She believes that tradition and language are extremely important, especially in Native American culture, which is why her family is so important to her. Her work is completely dedicated to her children.
Bush's Mourning Feast (PDF)
Beth Piatote is a Ni:mi:pu: (Nez Perce) scholar and author. She is a member of Chief Joseph’s Tribe and the Colville Confederated Tribes. Piatote currently works as an Associate Professor of Native American Studies in the department of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley. Piatote holds a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University.
In the mid 1990s, Piatote worked as a reporter with the Eugene Register-Guard. Her research interests include Ni:mi:pu: (Nez Perce) language and literature, Native American/Aboriginal literature and federal Indian law in the United States and Canada, as well as American literature and cultural studies, history and law. Piatote now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her two children
Beading Lesson (PDF)
National Museum of the American Indian -- Smithsonian Online Resources on Native American Women