CREATIVE WRITING

Allison Hedge Coke , IAIA Faculty

Biography:

Allison Adelle (A. A.) Hedge Coke is Huron; Eastern Tsalagi; French Canadian; Portuguese. She grew up in North Carolina, Canada, and on the Great Plains. She holds an AFA from the Institute for American Indian Arts, an MFA from Vermont College, and a professional performing arts certificate from Estelle Harmon's.

Education:

AFA from the Institute for American Indian Arts, an MFA from Vermont College, and a professional performing arts certificate from Estelle Harmon's.

Awards:

• Allison has been named the Writer of the Year in Poetry in 2005 by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers for her book Off Season City Pipe from Coffeehouse Press.
• Allison was presented the Mayor's Award for Literary Excellence in 2003 in Sioux Falls. She received a South Dakota Arts Council Artist Fellowship, and an Excellence in Teaching Award from the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation in 2002.
• Allison was named the Mentor of the Year in 2001 by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers for her work with incarcerated Native youth. She was a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship finalist in 1999, and held a South Dakota State Arts Council, Individual Artist Project Grant in 1999. Allison was a Macdowell Colony Resident Fellow in Petersborough, New Hampshire, in fall 1996. She was a summer writing fellow at Naropa University in 1992 and 1993.

• Allison's poetry volume Dog Road Woman received a 1998 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, was a finalist for the 1998 Patterson Prize, given by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College (NJ) and was a finalist for the Native Writers Circle of the Americas First Book Award in Poetry. She received nominations for the Pushcart Prize in both 1999 and 2000. She received an Abiko Quarterly editor's choice award in 1995.

• Allison is also the winner of the "Doris Gregory Memorial Scholarship and Creative Writing Award" by the New Mexico Press Women's Association '93; the "Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship Award" '93; the "Creative Writing Departmental Award' (poetry; fiction; playwriting; non-fiction essay) by the Institute for American Indian Arts '93; the "Naropa Poetry Prize" by the Institute for American Indian Arts and "Red Elk Scholarship" by the Naropa Institute '92; and an "Associate Residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts" '92.

Books by Allison Hedge Coke or containing her work:

Blood Run, Salt Publishing. [Forthcoming Sept. 06]

Off-Season City Pipe, Coffee House Press, poems.

National Poetry Month offering from the Academy of American Poets.

Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer, memoir, University of Nebraska Bison Books.

Powerful memoir rips at emotions, Billings Gazette review, 4/25/04 Dog Road Woman : Poems, Coffee House Press.

Year Of The Rat, (Chapbook) Grimes Press. From the Fields, Editor, California Poets in the Schools Press.

They Wanted Children, Editor, Sioux Falls School District Press Coming to Life, Editor, Sioux Falls School District Press.

It's Not Quiet Anymore: New Work from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Co-Senior Editor with Heather Ahtone, Institute of American Indian Arts Press. Voices of Thunder: New Work from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Co-Editor with Heather Ahtone, Institute of American Indian Arts Press

Teaching Statement:

coming soon!