Linda Hogan
Native American Author
Novelist, Poet & Memoirist
“[Hogan] is a significant figure in our literature.” —Jim Harrison
"We must wonder what of value can ever be spoken from lives that are lived outside of life, without a love or respect for the land and other lives." —Linda Hogan
Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and activist, is widely considered to be one of the most influential and provocative Native American figures in the contemporary American literary landscape, and is an internationally recognized public speaker. Her most recent books are the poetry collection, Rounding the Human Corners (Coffee House Press, 2008), and the novel, People of the Whale (Norton, 2008). Her other books include the novels Mean Spirit, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Oklahoma Book Award, the Mountains and Plains Book Award; Solar Storms, a finalist for the International Impact Award, and Power. Her collection of poetry The Book of Medicines was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other poetry books have received the Colorado Book Award and an American Book Award. Publishers Weekly describes her writing as “deep and full of grace.”
Her nonfiction includes The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir, and Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World. In addition, she has co-authored, with Brenda Peterson, Sightings: The Mysterious Journey of the Gray Whale for National Geographic Books, edited several anthologies on nature and spirituality, and written the script, Everything Has a Spirit, a PBS documentary on American Indian Religious Freedom. Her newest work was as editor for thirty years of Parabola essays, the series The Inner Journey: Native Traditions, from Morning Light Press, just out, and a short documentary for PBS/American Experience, for the REEL/NATIVE series, A Feel for the Land.
Hogan has received a prestigious Lannan Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from both the Native Writers Circle of the Americas and Wordcraft Circle. She has also received the Mountains and Plains Lifetime Achievement award and has been inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. A Professor Emerita from the University of Colorado, she is now the Writer in Residence for The Chickasaw Nation and lives in Oklahoma.
Called a “quintessential econovelist” by Dana Seaman, environmental issues are the major focus in all of Hogan’s work, writing, and teaching. She has been involved for thirteen years with the Native Science Dialogues and the new Native American Academy and for four years with the graduate SEED Institute. She was an invited writer-speaker at the United Nations Forum, has had work translated in all major languages, and speaks both nationally and internationally, including in Alcala Spain as keynote speaker at the Eco-criticism. She has also worked with Native youth in horse programs.
About ROUNDING THE HUMAN CORNERS (Poems, 2008)
In her first book of poetry since 1993's groundbreaking The Book of Medicines, Linda Hogan locates the intimate connections between all living things and uncovers the layers that both protect and disguise our affinities. With soaring imagery, clear lyrics, and entrancing rhythm, Hogan’s poetry becomes a visionary instrument singing to and for humanity. From the microscopic creatures of the sea to the powerful beauty of horses, and from the beating heart of her unborn grandson to the vast, uncovered expanses of the universe, Hogan reminds us that, “Between the human and all the rest / lies only an eyelid.”
About PEOPLE OF THE WHALE (Novel, 2008)
“Deeply ecological, original, and spellbinding, Hogan ascends to an even higher plane in this hauntingly beautiful novel of the hidden dimensions of life, and all that is now imperiled.” —Donna Seaman
A powerful story of a Vietnam veteran torn between his war experience and his Native American community. Raised in a remote seaside village, Thomas Witka Just marries Ruth, his beloved since infancy and they have a son. 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 his son. Hogan, called our most provocative Native American writer, with "her unparalleled gifts for truth and magic" (Barbara Kingsolver), has written a compassionate novel about the beauty of the natural world and the painful moral choices humans make in it. With a keen sense of the environment, spirituality, and the trauma of war, People of the Whale is a powerful novel for our times.
About THE WOMAN WHO WATCHES OVER THE WORLD: A NATIVE MEMOIR (2002)
Hogan offers a memoir rich with the texture of her life as a Chickasaw Indian. Each chapter weaves together her personal and often tragic experiences as the daughter of an army sergeant with Native history, myths, legends, earth, and contemporary life. Although she is often depicting painful events, her voice resonates calm. For example, an unsettling discussion of her pubescent love affair with an adult man while her family is stationed in Germany introduces exploitation and abuse. This is followed by the strong and tranquil chapter "Water: A Love Story," in which she crosses the ocean on her return to America. She is a "child held up by water" as she travels "away from a broken human past." Even the chapter titles emit an otherworldly quality: "Fire, Dreams and Visions: The Given-Off Light," "Silence Is My Mother," and "Bones, and Other Precious Gems." Words, after all, "are the defining shape of a human spirit." —Library Journal
"Hogan exposes Native history in her storytelling fiction"
A 1995 article about Hogan from Printed Matter.
