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| Anne M. Dunn (Photo submitted) |
The public is invited to the publication launch of Fire in the Village: New and Selected Stories by Anishinabe-Ojibwe story-teller Anne M. Dunn. The reading takes place on September 30th, 7 to 8:30 pm., at Trepanier Hall, AICHO, 212 West Second Street, Duluth. The event is free and open to the public.
Fire in the Village: New and Selected Stories (Holy Cow! Press, 2016) gathers together seventy-five stories from Anne's out of print collections and includes twenty-five new stories. The cover art and interior illustrations are created by Anne's daughter, Annette Humphrey, who is also a musician and will perform with her mother at the publication event. Anne and Annette live in Deer Lake, Minnesota near the Leech Lake reservation.
As noted author and critic Beverly Slapin has commented, "Everyone knows a circle has no beginning and no end. In Fire in the Village, Anishinabe elder and wisdom-sharer Anne M. Dunn shows us a world in which everything in Creation has life, in which everything has volition, in which everything needs to be thanked and respected. It’s a world inhabited by mischievous Little People and wise elders; by four-leggeds, two-leggeds, flying nations, swimmers and those who creep; by hovering spirits and the children who can see them, and by haunting flashbacks that just won’t go away. Like points in a circle, each story has a place that informs the whole.
Here are 75 stories of how things came to be and how the humans (some of them, anyway) came to understand their responsibilities to all Creation. Stories of how the Little People can make huge things happen and how elders and children may be the only ones who understand and respect them. Stories about why butterflies are beautiful but can’t sing, why Tamarack drops its needles in winter, and why, every season, Anishinabeg give great thanks to the sap-giving maple trees. And gut-wrenching stories of the horrors inflicted on innocent little children in the Indian residential schools and stories of internalized racism and stories of good, loving parents who have alcoholism."
This project was funded in part by a grant from the Anishinabe Fund of the Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation.
254 pages, $18.00, available from local bookstores or through amazon.com. For additional information, please contact Holy Cow! Press, 218-724-1653; holycow@holycowpress.org
