Positions
Biography
Carolyn Dunn is an American Indian artist of Cherokee, Muskogee Creek, and Seminole descent on her father's side, and is Cajun, French Creole, and Tunica-Biloxi on her mother's. Primarily a poet and a playwright, Carolyn began telling and writing stories at a very young age, being exposed to storytelling traditions from all aspects of her very Southern and very Western background. Her work has been recognized by the Wordcraft Circle of Storytellers and Writers as Book of the Year for poetry (Outfoxing Coyote, 2002) as well as the Year's Best in 1999 for her short story "Salmon Creek Road Kill", Native American Music Awards (for the Mankillers cd Comin to Getcha) and the Humboldt Area Foundation. In addition to Outfoxing Coyote, her books include Through the Eye of the Deer (Aunt Lute Books, 1999), Hozho: Walking in Beauty (McGraw Hill, 2002) and Coyote Speaks (H.N. Abrams, 2008). As an academic, Carolyn's work has primarily focused on landscape in American Indian women's literature (poetry, prose, and drama), and urban American Indian identity formation in California. She received her Doctorate in American Studies (with a focus on American Indian Literature and Theater) from the University of Southern California, where she was a James Irvine Fellow, and an M.A. in American Indian literature and folklore from UCLA. Her essays have appeared in The American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Belles Lettres, and the anthologies American Indian Performing Arts: Critical Directions, Reading Native American Women, and Cultural Representation and Contestation in Native America, among others. She has taught and developed university curriculum in American Indian literature (poetry and fiction), history, and theatre; she has adapted and directed numerous radio theatre plays as well as staged productions of traditional stories, poems and songs with the American Indian Theatre Collective, Chapa De Indian Youth Theatre Company, The Los Angeles Theater Project.
Productions
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Playwright Frybread Queen (2011) |