Susan Power
Encyclopedia
Susan Power is a Standing Rock Sioux
author from Chicago
. She earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard University
and a JD
from Harvard Law School
. After a short career in law, she decided to become a writer, starting her career by earning an MFA
from the Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Her 1995 novel, The Grass Dancer, contains a complex plot about four generations of Native Americans, stretching from 1864 to 1986. The work received the 1995 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction. Power has written several other books as well. Her short fiction has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review
, Voice Literary Supplement, Ploughshares
, Story
, and The Best American Short Stories
1993. She teaches at Hamline University
in St. Paul
, Minnesota
.
Sioux
The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
author from Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. She earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and a JD
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...
from Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
. After a short career in law, she decided to become a writer, starting her career by earning an MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
from the Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Her 1995 novel, The Grass Dancer, contains a complex plot about four generations of Native Americans, stretching from 1864 to 1986. The work received the 1995 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction. Power has written several other books as well. Her short fiction has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review
Paris Review
The Paris Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton. Plimpton edited the Review from its founding until his death in 2003. In its first five years, The Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S...
, Voice Literary Supplement, Ploughshares
Ploughshares
Ploughshares is an American literary magazine founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in the heart of Boston...
, Story
Story (magazine)
Story was a magazine founded in 1931 by journalist-editor Whit Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, in Vienna, Austria. Showcasing short stories by new authors, 67 copies of the debut issue were mimeographed in Vienna, and two years later, Story moved to New York City where Burnett and Foley...
, and The Best American Short Stories
Best American Short Stories
The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American literature.-Edward O'Brien:The...
1993. She teaches at Hamline University
Hamline University
-Red Wing location :Hamline was named in honor of Leonidas Lent Hamline, a bishop of the Methodist Church whose interest in the frontier led him to donate $25,000 toward the building of an institution of higher learning in what was then the territory of Minnesota. Today, a statue of Bishop Hamline...
in St. Paul
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...
, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
.
Works
- The Grass DancerThe Grass DancerThe Grass Dancer is a novel by Susan Power. It received the 1995 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Terri Windling selected it as one of the best fantasy books of 1994, as well as the best fantasy first novel, describing it as "a fine work of American magical realism . . . a richly mythical novel."....
, Putnam, 1994. - Strong Heart Society, Penguin, 1998.
- Roofwalker, Milkweed Editions, 2002.
Further reading
- Kratzert, M. "Native American Literature: Expanding the Canon" in Collection Building Vol. 17, 1, 1998, p. 4.