Publisher features Native writers

Earthworks book series presents poetry and proseThe power of storytelling permeates Earthworks, a two-year-old paperback book series featuring American Indian writers from Salt Publishing, a British firm. The recent arrival in bookstores of the 2006 offerings brings the number of published volumes to 13, with more to come in the years ahead, according to series editor Janet McAdams, Alabama Creek, a poet and a faculty member at Kenyon College.

According to McAdams, the series is selling well, and individual books have garnered awards in the United States, Great Britain and Australia. "Universities want to teach this material," she said. She added that nevertheless, American academia has a long way to go in understanding its significance: "It's shocking that you can earn a degree in American Studies without ever studying the culture of the people whose land this is. Works by white writers make up the default canon, while indigenous writers are seen as ornamentation."