Heid Erdrich
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Heid Erdrich, Ojibwe/Metis poet
Heid E. Erdrich, is author of three collections of poetry, The Mother's Tongue and Fishing for Myth, and "National Monuments" (Oct. 2008) as well as co-editor (with Laura Tohe) of Sister Nations: Native American Women on Community. She has also authored a play, Curiosities: a Play in Two Centuries which was given a staged reading as part of the Alternate Visions series at Pangea World Theater in 2005. A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, she was raised in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. She co-founded the Turtle Mountain Writing Workshop and Birchbark House, a non-profit indigenous language and literature clearinghouse, with Louise Erdrich, her sister. Her books have each been nominated for the Minnesota Book Awards and her writing has received numerous grants and honors. Her degrees are from Dartmouth College and The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars.
A long-time college teacher, Heid Erdrich taught for more than a decade at the University of St. Thomas where she was tenured. In 2007 she left full-time teaching to concentrate on writing and working with Native artists including visual artists at Ancient Traders Gallery in Minneapolis.
In 2008-2009, Heid Erdrich will travel to read and teach at Bismarck Community College in Bismarck, ND; Mankato State College, Good Thunder Reading Series, Mankato, Minnesota; Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM and elsewhere. She will also be a regular guest lecturer at Hamline University in a class on writing and the sacred.
In August of 2009, Heid will teach at the sixth annual Turtle Mountain Writers Workshop in Belcourt, North Dakota.
Heid regularly hosts readings and events at Birchbark Books and Native Arts in Minneapolis. She has also been a mentor for The Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.
Awards
Heid was named Mentor of the Year 2003-2004 by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. She was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award in 2006 for The Mother's Tongue and in 2003 for Sister Nations and in 1998 for Fishing for Myth. Heid was named an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota. She has received a Bush Leadership Fellowship, to study how Ojibwe authors use Ojibwe language in literature written in English. She has also received a State Arts Grant in poetry, 2002-2003, and 2008, a Minnesota Historical Society Research Award, 2001-2002 and a Loft Career Grant, 2000-2001.
Writing available online
Beauty Sleep, an essay, from The Loft site.
Heid and Laura Tohe reading at the National Museum of the American Indian. [RealVideo]
Parade of Old Loves from the Salt Publishing site.
Books by Heid E. Erdrich
National Monuments, Michigan State University Press.
The Mother's Tongue, Salt Publishing.
Sister Nations, Heid Erdrich and Laura Tohe (Editors), New Rivers Press.
Fishing for Myth: Poems, New Rivers Press.
Maria Tallchief, Raintree/Steck Vaughn.
Anthologies
Selected:
Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework, Pamela Gemin (Editor), Univ. Of Iowa Pr.
Are You Experienced? Baby Boom Poets At Midlife, Pamela Gemin (Editor), Univ. Of Iowa Pr.
Rules of Thumb: 73 Authors Reveal Their Fiction Writing Fixations, Michael Martone & Susan Neville (Editors), Writers Digest Books.
Motives for Writing, Robert Keith Miller (Editor), McGraw-Hill
Stories Migrating Home: A Collection of Anishnaabe Prose, Kim Blaeser (Editor), Loonfeather Press: Minnesota.
American Poetry for the Next Generation, Gerald Costanzo and Jim Daniels (Editors), Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Boomer Girls, Paula Sergi and Pamela Gemin (editors), University of Iowa Press.
The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry, Robert Alexander, Mark Vinz, C. W. Truesdale (Editors), New Rivers Press.
Reviews
"Me Sexy", for Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Solar Storms, from The Women's Review of Books
Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World, from The Women's Review of Books
See Also
Heid Erdrich on Voices in the Gaps.
Birchbark Books and Native Arts
Denise Low's comments on Heid's poetry
This page is part of the Storytellers: Native American Authors Online project.
