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Joseph Bruchac lives with his wife, Carol, in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry. Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished. He, his younger sister Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to work extensively in projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture, language and traditional Native skills, including performing traditional and contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers. He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio. His work as a educator includes eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. With his wife, Carol, he is the founder and Co-Director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press. He has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award) and Returning the Gift. His poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review, Cricket and Aboriginal Voices to National Geographic, Parabola and Smithsonian Magazine. He has authored more than 70 books for adults and children, including The First Strawberries, Keepers of the Earth (co-authored with Michael Caduto), Tell Me a Tale, When the Chenoo Howls (co-authored with his son, James), his autobiography Bowman's Store and such novels as Dawn Land, The Waters Between, Arrow Over the Door and The Heart of a Chief. Forthcoming titles include Squanto's Journey (Harcourt), a picture book, Sacajawea (Harcourt), an historical novel, Crazy Horse's Vision (Lee & Low), a picture book, and Pushing Up The Sky (Dial), a collection of plays for children. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and both the 1998 Writer of the Year Award and the 1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joe Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the United States from Florida to Hawaii and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He has been a storyteller-in-residence for Native American organizations and schools throughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Onondaga Nation School. He discusses Native culture and his books and does storytelling programs at dozens of elementary and secondary schools each year as a visiting author.
Poetry and Prose from the First North American Native Writers' Festival: 029
1994
Native American Tales from the Northeast Woodlands
1989
1996
2020
An Oral History of Native American People
1997
A Collection of True, Tortured, Wild, Hilarious, Concise, and Intense Tales of Teenage Life
2015
A Cherokee Story
1993
2003
2015
2000
2009
2008
Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves
2012
2010
2007
2004
The Story of the First Thanksgiving
2000
2005
2019
1997
A Novel of the Red River War
2016
1993
2018
American Indian History, Culture, and Values through Storytelling
2003
2022
1993
2012
2015
2001
2013
Tales from Native America
1993
2007
2001
A Hero's Tale
2006
2000
1992
Tragic Story of A Proud People's Forced March from Their Homeland
2002
2006
1999
2006
1995
A Cherokee Tale
1995
1994
Stories From The Adirondack Foothills
2022
A Book about Storytelling
1997
2011
2002
2020
A Traditional Abenaki Story
2004
The Founding of the Iroquois League
2021
A Navajo Code Talker's Story
2018
2020
The Journal of Jesse Smoke, a Cherokee Boy, The Trail of Tears, 1838
2001
2021
2003
Seven Native American Plays for Children
2000
A Muskogee Story
1994
Intertribal Stories for Kids
2021
2016
An Alphabet of Native America
1997
2015
1993
American Indians and Alcatraz
2023
1990
1999
2021
History and Legends
1993
2020
A Native American Year of Moons
1992
2005
2006
2008
2004
Legends of Native American Sacred Places
1996
2003
A Journey to Myself
1997
1995
2014
A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two
2005
2017
2012
2007
1996
2022
1995
A Novel
2016
A Native American Year
2002
Abenaki Stories
1988
1983
Preserving a Sense of Wonder
2004
The Life of Ely S. Parker, Seneca Sachem and Civil War General
2020
1998
2016
1985
2011
1998
2008