Four Anishinaabe authors will speak in the Library Rotunda at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) at 4:30 pm on November 9, 2021. In-person attendance will be limited to 60 people, but the event will be recorded for later viewing.
Sharing Our Stories: A Conversation with Four Anishinaabe Authors, will showcase Linda LeGarde Grover, Carter Meland, Marcie Rendon, and Dennis Staples. Anishinaabe people have a long and rich literary tradition. This event will celebrate the growing and diverse body of Anishinaabe writing being published today and why Anishinaabe perspectives matter. The authors will discuss the sources of inspiration for their stories as well as share if/how their personal experiences shape and influence their writing. They will discuss character development, plot, and importance of place among other topics.
“It’s so exciting to see the field of Anishinaabe literature growing, thriving, and gaining the attention it deserves,” says Jill Doerfler, professor and department head of American Indian Studies. “I think the diversity of genres and genre defying work is especially exciting; I’m looking forward to learning more from the authors.”
Books from all four authors will be on sale before and after the event. The sponsors of the event include the UMD programs: the Commission for Equity, Race and Ethnicity; the Department of American Indian Studies; the American Indian Learning Resource Center, the Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies; the Office of Equity and Diversity; the Chancellor’s Climate Change Teams, Department of Studies in Justice, Culture and Social Change, and others. For more info contact [email protected], 218-726-7842.
About the Authors
Linda LeGarde Grover (Bois Forte) is professor emeritus of American Indian studies at UMD. Her most recent book is Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong. Grover’s novel The Road Back to Sweetgrass received the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Fiction Award, as well as the Native Writers Circle of the Americas First Book Award. The Dance Boots, a book of stories, received the Flannery O’Connor Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and her poetry collection The Sky Watched: Poems of Ojibwe Lives received the Red Mountain Press Editor’s Award and the 2017 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year won the 2018 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction and the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award.
Carter Meland (White Earth Anishinaabe descendant) is professor of American Indian Studies at UMD. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies with a thesis that examined the role of trickster figures in the works of contemporary Native novelists. Meland's articles, stories, and poems have appeared in journals and books like Studies in American Indian Literatures, Yellow Medicine Review, Seeing Red: Hollywood’s Pixeled Skins, and Sudden Storm: A Wendigo Reader. His first novel, Stories for a Lost Child, was a finalist for the 2018 Minnesota Book Award.
Marcie Rendon (White Earth) is author, playwright, poet, and community arts activist based in Minneapolis Her first novel in the Cash Blackbear mystery series, Murder on the Red River, won the 2018 Pinckley Prize for Debut Crime Fiction and was the August/September 2021 selection for One Book | One Minnesota, a statewide book club that invites Minnesotans of all ages to read a common title and come together virtually to enjoy, reflect, and discuss. Her second novel Girl Gone Missing was shortlisted for an Edgar award in January 2020 and is the Fall 2021 One Read for Racial Justice series selection for St. Catherine University in St. Paul. Rendon also received the 2020 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, created to honor a Minnesota artist who has made significant contributions to the state’s cultural life.
Dennis Staples (Red Lake) is from Bemidji, Minnesota, and graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts with an MFA in fiction. He is a graduate of the 2018 Clarion West Writers Workshop and a recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship. His work has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and Nightmare magazine. This Town Sleeps is his first book.