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.
Allison's comparison review on Luci Tapahonso and Adrian Louis was printed in Looking at the Words of 0ur People. She edited From the Fields, an anthology of writing by migrant and rural children in California, under a Lannan Grant for California Poets In The Schools, Coming to Life, poems for peace in response to 9-11 from students in the Sioux Falls School District, and They Wanted Children, an anthology of Native American, Sudanese, Latino, Asian, African American and European descent students' stories and poems of adversity and strife untold in the mainstream high school they attend. She also co-edited Voices of Thunder and It's Not Quiet Anymore for the Institute for American Indian Arts.She is currently editing two new anthologies: Working Clans, a collection of writing representing Native work ethic and contemporary labors, and Radio Wave Mama, a collection of work from writers whose parents suffer mental illness. She directed the Writer's Voice at the Sioux Falls YMCA and co-directed the American Indian Registry for the Performing Arts, is Visiting Distinguished Professor for Hartwick College (2004) and MFA faculty at Northern Michigan University (writing and Native literatures).
Allison performs readings, workshops, seminars, talks, motivational presentations, and lectures and performs in-services on enhancing writing skills, NAS and Youth-at-Risk education. She created and organized an online mentorship project in literary arts for incarcerated youth in South Dakota through ArtsCorr (LAMYISD@yahoo.com). Many members of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers as well as other writers in the area are helping in this program. Allison was named the Mentor of the Year in 2001 by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers for this important work. She created and hosted the first-ever all-Indian WPBA sanctioned event, the Northern Plains Intertribal Poetry Bout -- Joe Hipp Championship Tribute, High Plains Bookfest, summer 2004. Henry Real Bird contended with Luke Warm Water. Kim Blaeser, Diane Glancy, Mardell Plain Feather, Cassandra Walks Over Ice, Barney Old Coyote, Phoenicia Bauerle and the Night Hawk Singers participated in making this event a Gazette front page and public radio hit in Billings.
A page on Allison in the Berea College English Dept. Women Poets site.
An article in Indian Country Today on Allison is available.
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.
This is an "official" site in that this page was constructed with the assistance and active collaboration of the poet, Allison Hedge Coke. The website "author" is Karen M. Strom.
© 1997 - 2004 Allison Hedge Coke and Karen Strom.
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