An award-winning and internationally acclaimed Minnesota-born Anishinaabe novelist, poet, historian and screenwriter is scheduled to visit North Dakota State University on Monday, April 28.
Gerald Vizenor, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkley, will read selections from his new novel “Blue Ravens” at 3 p.m. in Beckwith Recital Hall. A book signing and reception will follow.
“Blue Ravens” is the story of two young Anishinaabe men from Minnesota’s White Earth Reservation drafted into the U.S. Army during World War I. The book commemorates the lives of two of Vizenor’s White Earth uncles who died in combat.
Vizenor, the principal author of the newly approved constitution of the White Earth Nation, has explored the history of Native peoples in many genres, including the novel “The Heirs of Columbus”, the poem “Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point,” and the experimental history “The People Named the Chippewa.”
He recently retired as Distinguished Professor American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Vizenor previously created the American Indian Studies program at Bemidji State University.
He is the founding editor of the University of Oklahoma Press American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series and the University of Nebraska Press Native Storiers Series.
The author of more than 30 books, Vizenor is the recipient of the American Book Award, Fiction Collective II Prize, Western Literature Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award and a Film in the Cities Award. He received Bemidji State University's Distinguished Minnesotan Award in 2005.
Vizenor’s visit is sponsored by the NDSU Office of the Provost; College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; Department of English; College of Human Development and Education; Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Studies; College of Pharmacy, Nursing and Allied Sciences; College of Science and Mathematics; Department of History, Philosophy, and Religion; Department of Modern Languages; Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation’s top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.