BOONE, N.C. — Poet, novelist and essayist Linda Hogan will visit Appalachian State University as the final author in Appalachian’s spring 2018 Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writing Series.
Internationally recognized, Hogan’s lyrical work illuminates a new environmental and indigenous activism, as well as Native spirituality. A member of the Chickasaw Nation and a former faculty member at the Institute of American Indian Arts, she is professor emerita at the University of Colorado.
Her works include the novels “Mean Spirit” (The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1991), a winner of the Oklahoma Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; “Solar Storms” (Scribner, 1997), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; “Power” (W.W. Norton & Co., 1999); and “People of the Whale” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2009).
Hogan’s poetry collection, “The Book of Medicines” (Coffee House Press, 1993), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other poetry has received the Colorado Book Award, an American Book Award and a Lannan Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. In addition, she has received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Her most recent awards were the 2016 Henry David Thoreau Prize from PEN American and a Native Arts and Cultures Award.
Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series
April 26, 2018
3:30 p.m.
201B Plemmons Student Union (Table Rock)
Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series Annual Juanita Tobin Memorial Reading
April 26, 2018
7:30 p.m.
201B Plemmons Student Union (Table Rock)
Hogan’s nonfiction includes the acclaimed collection of essays “Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Land” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007) and “The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002).
She, along with Brenda Peterson, co-authored “Sightings: The Gray Whale’s Mysterious Journey” (2003) for National Geographic Books, and she has edited several anthologies on nature and spirituality. She wrote the script “Everything has a Spirit,” a PBS documentary on American Indian religious freedom.
Hogan was inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame in 2007 for her writing and contributions to indigenous literatures, and she is currently on the board of advisors for Orion magazine.
Hogan’s new and selected poems, “Dark. Sweet.” (Coffee House Press), was published in 2014, and she has recently finished a new poetry collection, “A History of Happiness,” as well as the novel “The Mercy Liars.” She is currently completing a book of essays titled “The Radiant Life of Animals,” the title taken from her chapter on traditional indigenous knowledge and animals in a collection on traditional ecological knowledge forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Hogan was involved for 18 years with the Native Science Dialogues and the new Native American Academy and for several more years with the SEED Graduate Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has worked with at-risk teens in various places, including the Chickasaw Children’s Village.
In April 2014, Hogan was one of the writers adding to the 200-year-old record of the H.J. Andrews long-term ecological research site in the forest near Corvallis, Oregon — a collaboration between scientists and artists, which at this time, according to Hogan, continues to influence her writing.
Kathryn Kirkpatrick, professor in Appalachian’s Department of English, is the faculty host for Hogan’s visit.
“In my view, Linda Hogan is one of the most powerful writers on the planet, and it’s a great honor to have her visit our campus. I’m delighted that the Appalachian and larger community will have a chance to meet her and engage with her work,” Kirkpatrick said.
“Her novels and poems traverse many worlds: settler cultures and native cultures, the human and the more than human. One of the many strengths of her writing is its clear-eyed approach to the complexities, conflicts, and indeed, blessings that arise when these worlds collide.”
In an interview in Superstition Review, an online literary magazine published by Arizona State University, Hogan said, “We live in a world of many intelligences. Human language isn’t all that is spoken in the world around our lives. Other documented and studied languages exist in the animal world. … We are surrounded by voices intelligent and in need of respect.”
As part of her visit at Appalachian, Hogan will give the annual Juanita Tobin Memorial Reading.
When North Carolina poet Tobin, author of two critically acclaimed collections of poems, died in January 2007 at age 91, family and friends gathered to discuss a way to honor her memory. As a result, the Juanita Tobin Fund was initiated by Paul and Judy Tobin, the poet’s son and daughter-in-law, and Dr. Alice Naylor, retired Appalachian professor and longtime friend and companion of Tobin, to establish the annual Juanita Tobin Memorial Reading by a poet of national renown in Appalachian’s Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series.
Selected by the Literary Guild
"Extraordinary…If you take up no other novel this year, or next, this one will suffice to hold, to disturb, to enlighten and to inspire you."
Newsday
Early in this century, rivers of oil were found beneath Oklahoma land belonging to Indian people, and beautiful Grace Banket became the richest person in the Territory. But she was murdered by the greed of white men, and the Graycloud family, who cared for her daughter, began dying mysteriously. Letters sent to Washington, D.C. begging for help went unanswered, until at last a Native American government official, Stace Red Hawk, traveled west to investigate. What he found has been documented by history: rampant fraud, intimidation, and murder. But he also found something truly extraordinary–his deepest self and abiding love for his people, and their brave past.
From Pulitzer Prize finalist Linda Hogan, “Solar Storms” tells the moving, “luminous” (Publishers Weekly) story of Angela Jenson, a troubled Native American girl coming of age in the foster system in Oklahoma, who decides to reunite with her family.
At seventeen, Angela returns to the place where she was raised—a stunning island town that lies at the border of Canada and Minnesota—where she finds that an eager developer is planning a hydroelectric dam that will leave sacred land flooded and abandoned. Joining up with three other concerned residents, Angela fights the project, reconnecting with her ancestral roots as she does so.
Harrowing, lyrical, and boldly incisive, “Solar Storms” is a powerful examination of the clashes between cultures and traumatic repercussions that have shaped American history.
"Linda Hogan's remarkable gift is a language of her own, moving gracefully between ordinary conversation and the embrace of divinity…‘Power’ is a haunting, beautiful testament." — Barbara Kingsolver
When sixteen-year-old Omishto, a member of the Taiga Tribe, witnesses her Aunt Ama kill a panther-an animal considered to be a sacred ancestor of the Taiga people-she is suddenly torn between her loyalties to her Westernized mother, who wants her to reject the ways of the tribe, and to Ama and her traditional people, for whom the killing of the panther takes on grave importance.
"Deeply ecological, original, and spellbinding." —Booklist, starred review
Raised in a remote seaside village, Thomas Witka Just marries Ruth, his beloved since infancy. But an ill-fated decision to fight in Vietnam changes his life forever: cut off from his Native American community, he fathers a child with another woman. When he returns home a hero, he finds his tribe in conflict over the decision to hunt a whale, both a symbol of spirituality and rebirth and a means of survival. In the end, he reconciles his two existences, only to see tragedy befall the son he left behind.
Combining the rich imagery of her Indian heritage with the wisdom of Native female spirituality, Linda Hogan’s new collection of stunningly beautiful poems is a tonic for modern times.
Award-winning Chickasaw poet and novelist Linda Hogan explores her lifelong love of the living world and all its inhabitants.
"We want to live as if there is no other place," Hogan tells us, "as if we will always be here. We want to live with devotion to the world of waters and the universe of life." In offering praise to sky, earth, water, and animals, she calls us to witness how each living thing is alive in a conscious world with its own integrity, grace, and dignity. In “Dwellings,” Hogan takes us on a spiritual quest borne out of the deep past and offers a more hopeful future as she seeks new visions and lights ancient fires.
"A deeply courageous account of Hogan's personal and tribal history...staggering."—Pam Houston, O Magazine
"I sat down to write a book about pain and ended up writing about love," says award-winning Chickasaw poet and novelist Linda Hogan. In this book, she recounts her difficult childhood as the daughter of an army sergeant, her love affair at age fifteen with an older man, the legacy of alcoholism, the troubled history of her adopted daughters, and her own physical struggles since a recent horse accident. She shows how historic and emotional pain are passed down through generations, blending personal history with stories of important Indian figures of the past such as Lozen, the woman who was the military strategist for Geronimo, and Ohiesha, the Santee Sioux medical doctor who witnessed the massacre at Wounded Knee. Ultimately, Hogan sees herself and her people whole again and gives an illuminating story of personal triumph. "This wise and compassionate offering deserves to be widely read."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
By Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson
2003
On a Pacific odyssey from Mexico to Alaska in pursuit of the mysterious gray whale, Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson create a vivid tapestry of poignant stories and plainspoken science. Their two voices, that of an award-winning Native American writer and an acclaimed novelist, essayist, and naturalist, interweave the diverse strands of legend and lore, science and symbolism, wonder and controversy inspired by gray whales, which migrate 10,000 miles each year and have twice been hunted to the brink of extinction. The authors also address the three-way collision between the whales and their countless champions, the curtailed but still destructive whaling industry, and the tribal whaling rights of Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest who have resumed their traditional hunt. “Sightings” is a lyrical celebration of our eternally elusive yet irresistible kinship with the strange and surprising gray whale.
“Linda Hogan carries the voice of the deep past and a reexamined future. Her writing is evocative, true, and dangerous because she is not afraid to name evil and identify beauty.” — Terry Tempest Williams
Clear-eyed, soaring poems capture our intimacy with the natural world and represent best of the Pulitzer and NBCC finalist’s career.
“Dark. Sweet.” offers readers the sweep of Linda Hogan’s work—environmental and spiritual concerns, her Chickasaw heritage—in spare, elemental, visionary language.
An Interview with Linda Hogan
Superstition Review
This interview was conducted via email by Interview Editor Erin Regan. Of the process she said, “I was so thrilled to be able to interview Linda Hogan, whose voice stays with me long after I put down each of her books. Her words here and in her texts changed the way I think about the language of the natural world and how we respond to that natural voice.” In this interview, she discusses the ancient stories that influence us, the consequences of modern communication, and the wealth of nature.
Interview with Linda Hogan
Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments
I first met Linda Hogan ten years ago, when we were guest writers at the Oklahoma Arts Institute. Although there were several other writers in attendance—Robert Creeley, Phil Lopate, Amy Hempel—I was particularly struck by the presence of Linda Hogan.
The Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series, named in honor of alumna Hughlene Bostian Frank ’68, brings distinguished and up-and-coming creative writers to the Appalachian State University campus throughout the year to present lectures and discuss their works. Frank is a 2013 Appalachian Alumni Association Outstanding Service award recipient, past member of Appalachian’s Board of Trustees, current board member of the Appalachian State University Foundation Inc. and generous supporter of Appalachian.
The spring 2018 Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series is supported by the Appalachian State University Foundation Inc., Appalachian’s Office of Academic Affairs, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Office of Multicultural Student Development, Appalachian’s University Bookstore, Belk Library and Information Commons and the Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review. Business sponsors are The Gideon Ridge Inn, The Red Onion Restaurant and The New Public House & Hotel. Community sponsors include John and the late Margie Idol, Paul and Judy Tobin, Alice Naylor and Thomas McLaughlin.
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About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) at Appalachian State University is home to 17 academic departments, two centers and one residential college. These units span the humanities and the social, mathematical and natural sciences. CAS aims to develop a distinctive identity built upon our university's strengths, traditions and locations. The college’s values lie not only in service to the university and local community, but through inspiring, training, educating and sustaining the development of its students as global citizens. More than 6,800 student majors are enrolled in the college. As the college is also largely responsible for implementing App State’s general education curriculum, it is heavily involved in the education of all students at the university, including those pursuing majors in other colleges. Learn more at https://cas.appstate.edu.
About Appalachian State University
As a premier public institution, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives. App State is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System, with a national reputation for innovative teaching and opening access to a high-quality, affordable education for all. The university enrolls more than 21,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and 80 graduate majors at its Boone and Hickory campuses and through App State Online. Learn more at https://www.appstate.edu.
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