Braiding Starlight

Susan Deer Cloud is a M tis Catskill Native of Mohawk/Blackfoot/Seneca lineage. An alumna of Binghamton University and Goddard College, she has received various awards and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Chenango County Council for the Arts Literature Grant, First Prize in Allen Ginsberg Poetry Competition (twice), Prairie Schooner's Readers' Choice Award, and Native American Wordcraft Circle Editor's Award for multicultural anthology Confluence. Deer Cloud's most recent books are The Last Ceremony and Car Stealer (FootHills Publishing); her poems, stories and essays have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She has also edited Native anthology I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool) plus 2008 Spring Issue of Yellow Medicine Review, a Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art & Thought (she is now an adviser to Yellow Medicine). Currently she is editing FootHills' Re-Matriation Chapbook Series of Native Poetry. She releases Braiding Starlight into the universe with shining thank you, nia: wen, to the Great Mystery and all two leggeds and four leggeds who are such a splendid part of her life. Deer Cloud is especially thankful to Dorothy Little Sparrow for painting Braiding Starlight just for her and this constellation of poems.