Through a Red Place Book Launch
On Thursday, November 4 from 7:00-8:30pm EDT, Perugia Press presented a virtual book launch of Rebecca Pelky’s Perugia Press Prize winning Through a Red Place. This event, held in honor of Native American Heritage Month, featured Pelky and other creators with Native American heritage who were part of the journey of this book: writers Diane Glancy and Margaret Noodin, whose words in support of the book grace the back cover, and Kristin Emilyta, whose artwork adorns the front cover. Pelky’s book is also our 25th collection and is a special part of Perugia Press’s 25th anniversary celebration. If you missed the event live, you can check it out here on the Zoom recording (passcode ^H.7=E0B).
REBECCA PELKY is a member of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin and a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Her first poetry collection was Horizon of the Dog Woman (Saint Julian Press, 2020). Her second collection, Through a Red Place (Perugia Press, 2021), won the Perugia Press Prize. Pelky’s co-authored hiking guide to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was published by FalconGuides in 2021. She holds a PhD from the University of Missouri, an MFA from Northern Michigan University, and is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Clarkson University in Upstate NY. Read more about Through a Red Place on Pelky’s Perugia page.
DIANE GLANCY is professor emerita at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Currently she teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Carlow University in Pittsburgh. She also teaches Experimental Prose and Poetry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Her latest books are Island of the Innocent, a Consideration of the Book of Job, Turtle Point Press, 2020, and A Line of Driftwood, the Ada Blackjack Story, 2021, also Turtle Point. Forthcoming in 2022 is Home Is the Road, Driving the Wilderness, Shaping the Spirit, Broadleaf Books, Fortress Press. She has received a Minnesota Book Award, an American Book Award, and the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers. She is member #1255 on the First Families of the Cherokee Nation. For more, visit Glancy’s website.
MARGARET NOODIN received an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English and Linguistics from the University of Minnesota. She is Professor of English and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she also serves as the Associate Dean of the Humanities and Director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education. She is the author of Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature, Weweni and What the Chickadee Knows (Wayne State University Press) which are both bilingual collections of poetry in Anishinaabemowin and English. For more, visit ojibwe.net.
KRISTIN EMILYTA is a self-taught acrylic artist from Norwich CT. Her great-great-grandfather was the famed Mohegan Chief Matahga aka Burrill Fielding (1862-1952). Her grandmother was beloved Mohegan Elder Margaret LaVigne (1930-2010). Her mother, Laura LaVigne, spent her career working for the Mohegan Cultural & Community Programs Department. Kristin has been painting professionally for six years and shares her gift with her Mohegan community and the general public by teaching art classes. In 2019, her work was featured in an exhibition at the Mohegan Cultural Preservation Center. Most recently her work was on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum Of Art in Hartford. Check out more of Emilyta’s work on Etsy.
