Eric Hoffer Award category finalist and da Vinci's Eye finalist for cover art by Kim Shuck
The anthology explores how the Middle East has captured the imaginations of a significant group of Native American poets, most of whom have traveled to the Middle East (broadly defined to include the Arab world, Israel, Turkey, Afghanistan). What qualities of the region drew them there? What did they see? How did their cultural perspectives as Native Americans inform their reactions and insights? Three thematic sections—Place, People, Spirit—feature poems and notes inspired by the poets experiences of Middle Eastern cultures.
Contributors
Jim Barnes
Kimberly Blaeser
Trevino L. Brings Plenty
Natalie Diaz
Diane Glancy
Joy Harjo
Allison Hedge Coke
Travis Hedge Coke
Linda Hogan
LeAnne Howe
Craig Santos Perez
Linda Rodriguez
Kim Shuck
James Thomas Stevens
- Watch video interview with contributors Diane Glancy, Linda Rodriguez, Bojan Louis, and Kim Shuck at Haskell Indian Nations University. Video produced by Campbell Richmond & Asher Wilcox.
- Read the review in Washington Independent Review of Books by Grace Cavalieri
- Read the review in Transmotion
- Read the article about Joy Harjo winning the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers
- Read the article about Kim Shuck receiving a Poet Laureate Fellowship from Academy of American Poets
Diane Glancy
Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. She is mixed-blood, undocumented Cherokee. Her books include Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education, Report to the Department of the Interior, and Ironic Witness. Among her awards are a 2014 Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award, an American Book Award, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.
Linda Rodriguez
Linda Rodriguez’s three novels featuring Cherokee campus police chief Skeet Bannion have received critical recognition and awards, such as Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, and the St. Martin’s Press/ Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Award. She has written two books of poetry, Skin Hunger and Heart’s Migration. Rodriguez is a founding board member of 118 Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community.