Greg Sarris was born in Santa Rosa, California.[6] He was adopted shortly after his birth by a middle-classwhite couple, George and Mary Sarris, who believed they could not have children. Shortly after, they conceived the first of three biological children, which complicated life at home with his alcoholic father. Sarris was frequently the target of his father's abuse. In an effort to keep him out of harm's way, he was sent to live with various white and American Indian foster families. At the age of 12, Sarris met Pomo basket weaverMabel McKay, who taught him about American Indian customs and tradition. According to Sarris, McKay's guidance provided him with a sense of purpose.[7]
Education
After graduating from Santa Rosa High School in 1970,[8] Sarris attended Santa Rosa Junior College. In 1977 he graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English from UCLA. He went on to complete his graduate studies at Stanford University, earning a master's degree in creative writing in 1981 and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature in 1989.[9] Sarris received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (LHD) degree from Sonoma State University in June 2024.[10]
Greg Sarris’ mother, seventeen year old Mary Bernadette “Bunny” Hartman, of German, Jewish and Irish descent, came from a wealthy family. She was sent to Santa Rosa to deliver her child, which was not uncommon for unwed mothers at the time. She was inadvertently given the wrong blood type in a transfusion after giving birth, and died shortly thereafter. Sarris’ father was not named on the birth certificate. It wasn't until the early 1980s as a graduate student at Stanford that Sarris learned that Emilio Arthur Hilario, of Filipino, Miwok and Pomo descent, was his biological father. According to Sarris, he learned the identity of his great-great-grandparents from his grandfather, Emiliano Hilario. Hilario's grandmother, Reinette Smith Sarragossa, was the daughter of Emily Stewart, a woman of mixed blood ancestry, and Tom Smith, a well-known healer of Pomo and Coastal Miwok blood.[24][non-primary source needed]
Activism
In the early 1990s, Sarris worked to have the Coast Miwok and Pomo Native Americans gain recognition as a tribe. He co-authored the Graton Rancheria Restoration Act, 25 U.S.C. §1300n (Act) with California Indian Legal Services.[25] President Clinton signed the Act into law on December 27, 2000, officially granting the tribe status as a federally recognized tribe.[26] The Act mandated that the Secretary of the Interior take land in the tribe's aboriginal territory of Marin or Sonoma Counties into trust as the Tribe's reservation.
Published works
Novels
Watermelon Nights: A Novel, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1998; reissued 2021, University of Oklahoma Press.[27]
Short story collections
How A Mountain Was Made, Heyday (Berkeley, CA), 2017.
Grand Avenue, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1994.
(Editor and contributor) The Sound of Rattles and Clappers: A Collection of New California Indian Writing, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1994.
The Forgetters: Stories, Heyday Books (Berkeley, CA), 2024[29]
Nonfiction
Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1993.
Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1994.
(Editor, with Connie A. Jacobs and James R. Giles) Approaches to Teaching the Works of Louise Erdrich, Modern Language Association of America (New York, NY), 2004.
Film and Theater
Grand Avenue (television miniseries; based on his short story collection), Home Box Office, 1996.
Best Picture. Grand Avenue. London Native American Film Festival. July 1998[30]
Best Screenplay nomination, Grand Avenue, London Native American Film Festival.[31][32]
Best Screenplay. Outstanding Achievement in Writing. Grand Avenue.[33] First Americans in the Arts.
Best Picture. Grand Avenue. First Americans in the Arts. 1997.
Co-produced, advised, and was featured in a sixteen part series on American literature for public television called American Passages.
Word for Word produced the play Citizen, based on Sarris' story in 2023. It was praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as "as lush and as penetrating as a Sonoma County grapevine."[38]
Word for Word's production of Citizen was nominated for two San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle awards.[39]
Awards and achievements
AFP National Philanthropy Day Outstanding Grantmaker Award, November 2024[40]
↑ Lincoln, Kenneth. "Greg Sarris." Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 May 2016.
↑ Wasp, Jean. World Class Author, Screenwriter Greg Sarris Named to Native American Endowed Chair at SSU. Sonoma State University News Center. April 8, 2005. Web. 28 May 2016.
↑ Lincoln, Kenneth. "Greg Sarris." Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 May 2016.
↑ "Tribal Government" Graton Rancheria.n.p.n.d.Web.28 May 2016.
↑ "Board of Trustees". National Museum of the American Indian. Retrieved 2024-04-26.
↑ Lincoln, Kenneth. "Greg Sarris." Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 May 2016.
↑ Lincoln, Kenneth. "Greg Sarris." Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 May 2016.
↑ Lincoln, Kenneth. "Greg Sarris." Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 May 2016.
↑ Lincoln, Kenneth. "Greg Sarris." Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 May 2016.
↑ Lincoln, Kenneth. "Greg Sarris." Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 May 2016.
Lincoln, Kenneth. "Greg Sarris." Native American Writers of the United States. Ed. Kenneth M. Roemer. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 175. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 May 2016.
"Greg Sarris." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 May 2016.
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