3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers

by Valerie Lawson (Editor), Donna M Loring, Sarah Xerar Murphy

Overview

Winner of the 2018 Maine Literary Award for Anthology from Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance!

While much attention focuses on the southern border of the United States, 3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers turns to the northeast, where Canada and New England share borders, blood, and heritage. The land is disputed in places, in others the US and Canada share responsibility, and Tribal Lands reside as sovereign nations within their borders. The poems, essays, and short stories in 3 Nations Anthology explore the things that divide, the bridges between, and the intense love of this rugged region the people hold in common.

Edited by Valerie Lawson, authors of 3 Nations Anthology range from those for whom this book will be their first publication to a Pulitzer Prize nominee. They include: Kathleen Ellis, Stephanie S. Gough, Grey Held, Leonore Hildebrandt, Carol Hobbs, Paul Hostovsky, J. Kates, Michele Leavitt, Carl Little, Donna M. Loring, Mark Melnicove, Sarah Xerar Murphy, Susan Nisenbaum Becker, Fredda Paul, John Perrault, Bruce Pratt, Patricia Ranzoni, Cheryl A. Savageau, Catherine Schmitt, Lee Sharkey, Karin Spitfire, Elizabeth Sprague, David R. Surette, Jeri Theriault, Cindy Veach, and many others.

"...like pulling a deep, revivifying breath into the body."
--Patricia Smith, author, Incendiary Art

"...a book pulsing with the heartbeat of the land."
--Chris Benjamin, Atlantic Books Today

"...a refreshing change from the literary and cultural barriers that we all too often allow to come between us."
--Joseph Bruchac, Native Writers Circle of the Americas Writer of the Year Award winner

"Borderlines, figurative and literal, hum in the national and international consciousness with more volume right now. What unites and divides; what's shared and not; the power and complexity of lines drawn arbitrarily on a map. Distinctly of a place, this anthology achieves that rare straddle between timelessness and of-this-moment."
--The Boston Globe

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998819518
Publisher:	Resolute Bear Press
Publication date:	07/02/2017
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Valerie Lawson, along with her partner, Michael Brown, was the editor and publisher of Off the Coast, Maine's International Poetry Journal. Lawson was nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times, won awards for Best Narrative Poem and Spoken Word at the Cambridge Poetry Awards, and was a finalist for the Rita Dove Award. Lawson has been a bookseller, program manager, director of an arts center, coordinator of a literacy program, reading series organizer, emceed the Swedish National Poetry Slam, and participated in multi-media cultural exchanges with Ireland. Lawson and her partner live in downeast Maine with a pair of retired sled dogs on forty acres of trees with a view across Passamaquoddy Bay to New Brunswick, Canada. www.valerie-lawson.com

Donna M. Loring is an elder and present council member of the Penobscot Indian Nation. She held the position of the Nation's Representative to the Maine State Legislature for over a decade. She authored and sponsored LD 291 An Act to Require Teaching Maine Native American History and Culture in Maine's Schools which Governor Angus King signed into law on June 14th 2001. The law is changing the way Maine views it's history. Loring is a graduate of the University of Maine at Orono where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. Donna is the President of Seven Eagles Media productions, a Vietnam Veteran (Long Binh 1967-1968), and author of In the Shadow of the Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine, a journal of her experiences in the Maine State Legislature as a Non-voting Tribal Representative. She the author of the musical Glooskape Chronicles Creation and the Venetian Basket. Donna was featured in the Maine Sunday Telegram as one of ten women Making a Difference in Maine and making Maine a better place to live and hosts a monthly radio show, Wabanaki Windows on WERU Community Radio. The University of New England houses her papers and sponsors an annual lecture series in her name. Donna is a member of the Deborah Morton Society of the University of New England and a member of the International Women's Forum (IWF). In 2017, Donna was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Maine.

Sarah Xerar Murphy: Interpreter, translator, community activist, award winning author; performance, visual and spoken word artist, Sarah Xerar Murphy has published, performed, shown, and toured in Mexico, Spain, the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Winner of Canada's Golden Beret Award as well as an Arts Council England International Artist's fellowship, Murphy has eight books and one sound art/spoken word CD to her credit. Of Choctaw, Irish, English, German, and Latino heritage, Murphy was encouraged from childhood by her Choctaw father, William D. Sherar to view our Turtle Island as one world. Brought up in Brooklyn, she has spent her adult life in Mexico and Canada, and currently in Bocabec, New Brunswick.

Table of Contents

This That This, Elizabeth Sprague

Super moon, rising, Danielle Woerner

Acadian Archaeology, David R. Surrette

Terminal Moraine, Leonore Hildebrandt

The Green Quilt, Cheryl Savageau

Borderline, Stephanie S. Gough

Chance of Afternoon Showers, JD Rule

A Lake in the Woods, J. Kates

Wood Lot in April, Michele Leavitt

One Letter Away: A Word Ladder, Catherine Schmitt

Lost and Found Logs, Charles McGowan

What It Is For, Cheryl Savageau

Le Barachois, Bruce Pratt

On the Way, Leonore Hildebrandt

Agronomist, Meteorologist, Mechanic, Midwife, Joyce Lorenson

Heirloom, Karen Skolfield

A Price to Pay, Emma Suárez-Báez

Names Properly, Jeri Theriault

How a Community of Women, Cindy Veach

Homecoming, David R. Surette

The Abyssal Plains, Jéanpaul Ferro

Over the Wall, Dan Crowfeather McIsaac

Downeast Odyssey: a trilogy of ultra-short stories, Chuck Kniffen

Names, Michael R. Brown

Waverly and the C-Notes, Frederick Lowe

Spring Pick-up, Carl Little

Taking Off the Plates, Kathleen Ellis

Wapizagonke, John Perrault

Allegiance, Karin Spitfire

Sweetfern, Barbara Chatterton

Storyteller, Leslie Wood

Hardware Store, Bar Harbor, Grey Held

The Hill, Susan Johnson

The Descent into Harvey, Robert J. Ward

March Hill, Michael R. Brown

Hawk’s View, Patrick Gentry Pierce

Bill, Cynthia Huntington

After El Faro, Grace Sheridan

Jazz trumpet wind, Danielle Woerner

The Rosary, David R. Surrette

Fact of Fate, Mark Melnicove

a mere geometry of light, Wendy Cannella

Winter Madness, Bunny L. Richards

Facing Both East & West at the Same Time, Patricia Smith Ranzoni

They Could Be Stars, Caroline Misner

Welcome to Great Village, Ellie O’Leary

Thinking Potatoes, Leonore Hildebrandt

Observations on the Garden, Fourth of July, Dennis Camire

Smelting, Sharon Mack

Big Fish Story, J. C. Elkin

Downeast One-upmanship, Susan Reilly

At the Supper Table, Carol Hobbs

Cedar, Sage, Sweetgrass, Jason Grundstrom-Whitney

Three Deer in Oquossoc, Sonja Johanson

The Illuminati Owe Carl 57 Cents, Rob Hunter

Privilege, Paul Hostovsky

Falls Reversing, Susan Johnson

Borrowed Dust, Susan Nisenbaum Becker

Eli-kisi-kikuhut Cihpolakon, Fredda Paul

Turtle Island Turtle Rattle, Sarah Xerar Murphy

Editorial Reviews

Borderlines, figurative and literal, hum in the national and international consciousness with more volume right now. What unites and divides; what's shared and not; the power and complexity of lines drawn arbitrarily on a map. Distinctly of a place, this anthology achieves that rare straddle between timelessness and of-this-moment.

--The Boston Globe

From the opening pages of the 3 Nations Anthology, Elizabeth Sprague's "This That This" emphatically announces a book pulsing with the heartbeat of the land. The words embody this land and call readers home to it; we are compelled to follow.

--Chris Benjamin, Managing Editor, Atlantic Books Today; Silver Atlantic Journalism Award winner, 2014

These are not poems of my world, but they are utterly vital missives from a world we all desperately need to know, the world where water aches an impossible blue, land lies nurtured and unscarred, and a precipitous beauty startles from all corners. Reading the poems in this long-overdue collection is like pulling a deep, revivifying breath into the body. And we're reminded that the world conjured so faithfully in this work is still there, where it's always been, still waiting for us.

--Patricia Smith, author, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the 2014 Rebekah Bobbitt Prize, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (The Academy of American Poets), and the Phillis Wheatley Award in Poetry

In many ways, the 3 Nations Anthology is a breath of fresh air. The idea of bringing together Canadian, Native, and New England writers is, in itself, a refreshing change from the literary and cultural barriers that we all too often allow to come between us. The fact that this collection is so well-edited, blending new and more established, prose and poetry, is another reason for celebration...let me just quote these lines from a piece by Dan Crowfeather McIsaac that catch the spirit of this collection: "My brothers and sisters, the walls are everywhere and they are very high indeed. But they are not too high if we work together. Come--give me your hand...."

--Joseph Bruchac, winner of the Writer and Storyteller of the Year Awards from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas and founder of the Greenfield Review Literary Center

From the Publisher