Working in all kinds of situations helps a writer make sense of the world. At least it did for me. But fewer and fewer writers haven’t worked outside… - LeAnne Howe

Humor defuses pain. Humor gives the narrators in my stories agency to tilt at the ever-whirling windmills of colonization. Humor opens a window on historic pain and trauma that American Indians dealt with at the hands of the federal government. Loss of land, loss of dignity, loss of identity, and of course the loss of a brother or sister, parent—which in my great grandmother’s era was a common event.

If it seems like a contradiction, it is. But that is the basis for all stories.

Writing is a form of activism. Again, let’s not separate into small boxes, ‘activism’ versus writing. Native people, I think, prefer to think in more holistic terms. A story is active and a story changes the world. A story is changing the world as I write this.