Joseph Bruchac

Who Is Joseph Bruchac?

Joseph Bruchac is one of the most prolific and influential Native American writers of the contemporary period — a poet, novelist, storyteller, and editor of Abenaki heritage whose work has done more than that of almost any other writer to bring Native American oral and literary traditions to a wide audience. Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, and raised by his grandparents in the Adirondack foothills, he was educated at Cornell and Syracuse, and founded the Greenfield Review Press in 1969, which became one of the most important small presses for multicultural and Native American literature in the country.

His poetry and fiction draw on Abenaki oral tradition, on the natural world of the northeastern woodlands, and on the themes of survival, memory, and the relationship between human beings and the land. His children’s books — many of them retellings of Abenaki and other Native American stories — have introduced generations of young readers to indigenous literary traditions. His memoir Bowman’s Store (1997) is one of the finest accounts of a bicultural upbringing in contemporary literature.

Bruchac is significant for TLA because his work embodies the conviction that the stories a people tells are the means by which it maintains its identity and its relationship with the world — a conviction that is deeply theological even when it is not explicitly religious.

In Their Own Words

Selected Bibliography

• The Good Message of Handsome Lake — 1979 — poetry
• Dawn Land — 1993 — novel
• Bowman's Store: A Journey to Myself — 1997 — memoir
• Skeleton Man — 2001 — novel
• Code Talker — 2005 — novel