Diane Glancy to Visit UND

Diane Glancy, an award-winning and prolific poet, playwright, and novelist, will give a public reading from her forthcoming novel The Reason For Crows: A Story of Kateri Tekakwitha (SUNY Press) on Tuesday March 3, 2009 in the East Asian Room (4th Floor) of the Chester Fritz Library, starting at 7 p.m. with a special announcement and reception to follow. Gerald Vizenor, author of Father Meme, remarks, “Diane Glancy is a storier of native remembrance at the verge of history. The Reason for Crows is an inspired first-person memoir of Kateri Tekakwitha, the daughter of a Christian mother and a Mohawk Chief. Kateri was touched by the Jesuits and ‘set apart by God.’ Pockmarked by smallpox and orphaned as a child in the late seventeenth century, she comes alive in the emotive voice of an eminent literary artist, a particular union of native spirits and God.” The reading is free and open to the public. The University of North Dakota Department of English, Adelphi, the Department of Indian Studies, the Office of Instructional Development, the Office of Research and Development, and the Chester Fritz Library are co-sponsoring the event, which is part of a three-day visit that also includes guest lectures in various UND classes, as well as a student luncheon.

Professor Diane Glancy, an author of Cherokee and German descent, currently holds the Richard L. Thomas Chair in Creative Writing at Kenyon College. Prior to this position, Glancy taught creative writing for nearly two decades at Macalester College. She also held the title of artist in residence for the State Arts Council of Oklahoma for nearly ten years. Glancy has taught at the Bread Loaf School of English M.A. program on the campus of the Native American Preparatory School in Rowe, New Mexico; at the University of Minnesota as the Edlestein-Keller Minnesota Writer of Distinction; and at The Loft in Minneapolis, where she was the Native American Inroads Mentor. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri, a master's degree from the University of Central Oklahoma, and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. She is also a past participant of the UND Writers Conference.

Glancy is known for drawing upon her surrounding and American history for inspiration. Her work includes Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea and The Man Who Heard the Land, a story set in Minnesota and North Dakota during the winter and flood of 1997

Select Glancy Readings

First chapter of The Reason for Crows available through SUNY Press

No Word for the Sea portion of novel in progress (available with permission of the author)

Glancy Reading Flyer