3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers

Winner of the 2018 Maine Literary Award for Anthology from Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance!

While much attention focuses on the southern border of the United States, 3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers turns to the northeast, where Canada and New England share borders, blood, and heritage. The land is disputed in places, in others the US and Canada share responsibility, and Tribal Lands reside as sovereign nations within their borders. The poems, essays, and short stories in 3 Nations Anthology explore the things that divide, the bridges between, and the intense love of this rugged region the people hold in common.

Edited by Valerie Lawson, authors of 3 Nations Anthology range from those for whom this book will be their first publication to a Pulitzer Prize nominee. They include: Kathleen Ellis, Stephanie S. Gough, Grey Held, Leonore Hildebrandt, Carol Hobbs, Paul Hostovsky, J. Kates, Michele Leavitt, Carl Little, Donna M. Loring, Mark Melnicove, Sarah Xerar Murphy, Susan Nisenbaum Becker, Fredda Paul, John Perrault, Bruce Pratt, Patricia Ranzoni, Cheryl A. Savageau, Catherine Schmitt, Lee Sharkey, Karin Spitfire, Elizabeth Sprague, David R. Surette, Jeri Theriault, Cindy Veach, and many others.

"...like pulling a deep, revivifying breath into the body."
--Patricia Smith, author, Incendiary Art

"...a book pulsing with the heartbeat of the land."
--Chris Benjamin, Atlantic Books Today

"...a refreshing change from the literary and cultural barriers that we all too often allow to come between us."
--Joseph Bruchac, Native Writers Circle of the Americas Writer of the Year Award winner

"Borderlines, figurative and literal, hum in the national and international consciousness with more volume right now. What unites and divides; what's shared and not; the power and complexity of lines drawn arbitrarily on a map. Distinctly of a place, this anthology achieves that rare straddle between timelessness and of-this-moment."
--The Boston Globe

Donna M. Loring is an elder and present council member of the Penobscot Indian Nation. She held the position of the Nation's Representative to the Maine State Legislature for over a decade. She authored and sponsored LD 291 "An Act to Require Teaching Maine Native American History and Culture in Maine's Schools" which Governor Angus King signed into law on June 14th 2001. The law is changing the way Maine views it's history. Loring is a graduate of the University of Maine at Orono where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. Donna is the President of Seven Eagles Media productions, a Vietnam Veteran (Long Binh 1967-1968), and author of In the Shadow of the Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine, a journal of her experiences in the Maine State Legislature as a Non-voting Tribal Representative. She the author of the musical Glooskape Chronicles Creation and the Venetian Basket. Donna was featured in the Maine Sunday Telegram as one of ten women "Making a Difference in Maine" and making Maine a better place to live and hosts a monthly radio show, "Wabanaki Windows" on WERU Community Radio. The University of New England houses her papers and sponsors an annual lecture series in her name. Donna is a member of the Deborah Morton Society of the University of New England and a member of the International Women's Forum (IWF). In 2017, Donna was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Maine.

Sarah Xerar Murphy: Interpreter, translator, community activist, award winning author; performance, visual and spoken word artist, Sarah Xerar Murphy has published, performed, shown, and toured in Mexico, Spain, the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Winner of Canada's Golden Beret Award as well as an Arts Council England International Artist's fellowship, Murphy has eight books and one sound art/spoken word CD to her credit. Of Choctaw, Irish, English, German, and Latino heritage, Murphy was encouraged from childhood by her Choctaw father, William D. Sherar to view our Turtle Island as one world. Brought up in Brooklyn, she has spent her adult life in Mexico and Canada, and currently in Bocabec, New Brunswick.

Valerie Lawson, along with her partner, Michael Brown, was the editor and publisher of Off the Coast, Maine's International Poetry Journal. Lawson was nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times, won awards for Best Narrative Poem and Spoken Word at the Cambridge Poetry Awards, and was a finalist for the Rita Dove Award. Lawson has been a bookseller, program manager, director of an arts center, coordinator of a literacy program, reading series organizer, emceed the Swedish National Poetry Slam, and participated in multi-media cultural exchanges with Ireland. Lawson and her partner live in downeast Maine with a pair of retired sled dogs on forty acres of trees with a view across Passamaquoddy Bay to New Brunswick, Canada. www.valerie-lawson.com