Joseph Bruchac

"Popular art, for masses of people, is often denigrated. But Breakfast Serials is popular art at it's best: accessible and adventurous. It bridges the generation gap and the school-home gap with fine writing, fine art, and exciting tales that tell, teach, and touch."

Biography

Joseph Bruchac lives in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry. Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished. He, his younger sister Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to work extensively in projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture, language and traditional Native skills, including performing traditional and contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers.

He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio. His work as an educator includes eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum-security prison. With his wife, Carol, he is the founder and Co-Director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press. He has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence (winner of the American Book Award) and Returning the Gift.

As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joe Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the United States from Florida to Hawaii and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He has been a storyteller-in-residence for Native American organizations and schools throughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Onondaga Nation School. He discusses Native culture and his books and does storytelling programs at dozens of elementary and secondary schools each year as a visiting author.

Serials

Janko and the Giant: A Tale of Old Slovakia

Janko and the Giant: A Tale of Old Slovakia by Joseph Bruchac is a folktale, a tall tale, a nonsense story, an adventure. Set in old world Slovakia, Bruchac draws on the impossible, fanciful adventures of young Janko and his dealings with giants, talking horses, bandits and just plain fun.

Spanish translation available.

 

The Black Squirrel

Joseph Bruchac's The Black Squirrel is a story about great stories—traditional native tales about monster animals, Chenoo cannibal giants, Little People, and brave deeds done to protect us all. It's every bit adventure and myth, as Harry Potter is part adventure, part fantasy.