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| CREATIVE WRITING
Biography: Evelina Zuni Lucero, Isleta/San Juan Pueblo, is a fiction writer, born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She spent the first eight years of her life at Isleta Pueblo before her family moved to Ignacio, Colorado, and then later to Stewart, Nevada, both BIA Indian agencies with boarding schools, where her father was superintendent. She grew up during the turbulent years of the Vietnam War with its accompanying political protests, the Civil Rights movement, the hippie movement, the women’s movement, and American Indian Movement, all of which affected her life in some way. She graduated from Carson City High School in 1971, and was accepted to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in the second year of the university’s Native American program. At Stanford, she majored in journalism and also took courses in American literature and creative writing. After graduation, she returned to Isleta Pueblo, and worked as a journalist for a number of years, writing for tribal and national Indian news publications. She later earned a masters degree in English within the creative writing program at the University of New Mexico, where she worked with New Mexican writer, Rudolfo Anaya, and the late Choctaw/Cherokee novelist and Native American literary critic, Louis Owens. As a writer, Lucero draws on her background and journalism skills, researching, observing, and searching for stories everywhere. Her first book set in the Southwest, including the Stewart boarding school campus, deals with issues of historical trauma Indian people have dealt with for over 500 years, and the unresolved pasts that go hand in hand with the trauma. The characters, a Native political activist jailed for a crime he did not commit, and a Pueblo potter, illustrate the unresolved pasts shoved into the closet and not dealt with. Her short fiction has appeared in various journals and anthologies, such as Blue Mesa Review, Northeast Indian Quarterly, Returning the Gift Anthology, Women on Hunting, Naive Roots & Rhythms, and Native Peoples Magazine. She lives in Isleta Pueblo with her
family, and is working on a second novel on Indian gaming which incorporates
historical imagination, political observations, and elements of mythical
realism. Excerpt From Novel In Progress: Click here (.PDF Format)
Education: University of New Mexico, M.A. English (within the creative writing program), Stanford University, B.A. Communications
Major Professional Activities:
“Christmas Pure and Simple” (nonfiction) Native Peoples, 27.3 (2004): 42. Recipient of Ata’a’xum Fellowship for Native American artists, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, June 2004 Civitella Ranieri Fellow, International Writers Residency at the Civitella Ranieri International Artist Center, Umbertide, Italy, Sept 6-Oct 11, 2004 Reading, Women’s Brown Bag, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, April 18, 2005. Co-editor A Spring Wind
Rising with Susan Brill de Ramirez, a volume of critical essays,
and creative writing on Acoma Pueblo poet Simon J. Ortiz, University
of New Mexico Press, projected publication 2006. Novel-in-Progress, Sovereign
Seven (working title). Teaching Statement: "I have been teaching at IAIA for eight years now. Teaching at a college with a Native-centric focus has given me the privilege to work with talented Native (and non-Native) students interested in the literary arts. It is exciting to watch students grow both in craft, and in their personal growth and development. We need more Native writers to tell our stories, and to counter entrenched stereotypes, and misconceptions of Indians. We need Native professionals to teach at all levels. We need more Native journalists, scriptwriters, and playwrights. I hope to show students the career options that are open to those with writing skills and a creative spirit. "
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