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Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers returned this year, after a year's hiatus from the awards in memory of late founder Lee Francis, IV, Laguna Pueblo, who passed in July 2003. Wordcraft grew out of the 1992 Returning the Gift Festival, in Norman, Oklahoma, a historic event that gathered Native writers from throughout the western hemisphere, spawned new growth and camaradie in Native writing, and celebrated the writing Native peoples have been doing for hundreds of years that has been ignored so long by the mainstream. Wordcraft Circle holds gatherings and workshops for Native and non-Native writers, from children to elders, throughout the US and Canada. This year's awards were given during the Young Writer's Workshop in Chickasha, organized by Regional Director Jay Goombi (Kiowa) and former National Caucus Member Lee Hester (Choctaw). Students from several schools, including USAO, Riverside Indian School, and the Comanche Nation College, have attended the workshops held this and the past two years in Chickasha. For more information about Wordcraft in general, its history, and the awards themselves, please go to http://www.wordcraftcircle.org/org.htm.
The following awards were presented:
Wordcrafter of the Year 2003-2004--MariJo Moore
This year's winner is MariJo Moore, for editing Genocide of the Mind, Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books 2003. This excellent volume contains contributions from several Wordcrafters and is already going into its second printing. It has been reviewed enthusiastically in several countries and makes significant contributions to both academic and activist literature. MariJo's ongoing commitment to helping others in Indian Country through encouraging writing and helping others--from children and elders to known scholars--to publish embodies the Wordcraft vision statement. MariJo, a mother and grandmother, is a Cherokee/Dutch/Irish writer living in North Carolina who also owns her own publishing company, Renegade Planets.
Writer of the Year 2002-2003 Prose--Pax Riddle
Riddle (Cherokee) wins this award for his book The Education of Ruby Loonfoot, a novel that explores the Indian Boarding School experience from the perspective of a young Ojibwe girl, caught between her Catholic mother's denial of the abuse she is experiencing and hunger for the healing her traditional grandmother offers.
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