Tiffany Midge

Last updated
Tiffany Midge
Born (1965-07-02) July 2, 1965 (age 58)
OccupationPoet
Author
Educator
LanguageEnglish
Nationality Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
Citizenship American
Education University of Idaho
Years active1995–present
Website
tiffanymidge.wixsite.com/website

Tiffany Midge (born July 2, 1965) is a Native American poet, editor, and author, [1] who is a Hunkpapa Lakota enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Midge was born to mother Alita Rose and father Herman Lloyd. [3] Midge's mother worked as a civil servant for King County and her father was a teacher. [4] Midge's mother was Lakota Sioux and grew up on a reservation in eastern Montana. [3] Midge's father was raised on a farm in Montana. His family was from Germany, but were originally from Russia near the Valga River. [5]

Midge grew up in the Pacific Northwest. For part of her childhood she lived in Snoqualmie Valley in Washington (state). [4] She has an older half-sister named Julie. [5]

In 2008, Midge received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Idaho. [6] [7]

Career

Midge's poetry is noted for its depiction of a self divided by differing identities, and for a strong streak of humor. [8] :157

In 2002, Finnish composer Seppo Pohjola commissioned Midge's work into a performance called Cedars for a choral ensemble that was produced at Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theater in Seattle. [2] [9] In 2015, Cedars was produced by the Mirage Theatre Company at La MaMa in New York City. [10] [11] The work is a mixture of poetry and prose set to music. The newer version incorporates work by many Native American writers who in addition to Midge include Alex Jacobs, Arthur Tulee, Deborah A. Miranda, Evan Pritchard, Gail Tremblay, Joseph Bruchac, Martha Brice, Molly McGlennen, and William Michael Paul. [11]

Midge was a humor columnist for Indian Country Media Network's Indian Country Today . [12]

In 2019, Midge published a memoir called Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's from University of Nebraska Press. [3] [13] Cleveland Review of Books said the novel's "embrace of grief allows for an expansive range of humor that includes satire, dry wit, Twitter, and inside jokes not here for white consumption." [14]

Midge's poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has appeared in McSweeney's, The Toast Butter Blog, Waxwing, Moss, Okey-Pankey, Mud City, Apex, The Rumpus, Yellow Medicine Review, The Raven Chronicles, North American Review and World Literature Today, and has been widely anthologized.

Teaching

Midge was a professor at Northwest Indian College, where she taught writing and composition.

In Spring 2019, she was the Simons Public Humanities fellow for University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities. [15] [16]

Honors and awards

Personal life

Midge lives in Moscow, Idaho, which she refers to as Nez Perce country, as well as Seattle, Washington. [4]

Selected works and publications

Books

Anthologies

Other work

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References

  1. "Interview with Workshop Leader Tiffany Midge". Montana Book Festival. 8 September 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Tiffany Midge - Team Poet". Department of English. University of Idaho. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 Midge, Tiffany (2019). Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN   978-1-496-21803-2. OCLC   1112608655.
  4. 1 2 3 Midge, Tiffany (13 April 2015). "Snapshots, a prose poem by Tiffany Midge (Me, as a Child Poetry Series)". Silver Birch Press.
  5. 1 2 Midge, Tiffany (1996). "Beets". In Trafzer, Clifford E. (ed.). Blue Dawn, Red Earth: New Native American Storytellers. New York: Anchor Books. pp.  267–278. ISBN   978-0-385-47952-3. OCLC   32893633.
  6. Midge, Tiffany (April 2008). The Fertility Circus (Thesis/dissertation). Moscow, ID: University of Idaho. OCLC   311595612.
  7. "Alumna Tiffany Midge Wins Kenyon Review Earthworks Prize for Indigenous Poetry". University of Idaho. 2013.
  8. Wilson, Norma C. (2005). "Chapter 6 - America's indigenous poetry". In Porter, Joy; Roemer, Kenneth M. (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature . Cambridge University Press. pp.  145–160. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521822831.007. ISBN   978-0-521-82283-1. OCLC   470047746. Midge entertains with her wit and humor, but also reminds readers of the horrors of contemporary life, which are not spiders or the ghosts of Indians murdered in the late nineteenth century, but rather a hollow consumerism.
  9. "Cedars: Excerpts from the Premiere - Seattle, Washington (2002)". Mirage Theatre Company. 2015.
  10. "Cedars". Mirage Theatre Company. 2015.
  11. 1 2 "CEDARS Features Texts by Ten Native American Writers at La MaMa, Now thru 2/1". BroadwayWorld. 22 January 2015.
  12. Pratt, Stacy (10 October 2019). "I'd Rather Make Jokes: Stacy Pratt talks to Tiffany Midge". Anomaly Features Supplement to the Online Journal of Literature and Art via Medium.
  13. Friesen, Peter (12 September 2019). "Tiffany Midge thumbs her nose at America, with wit and wisdom". Missoulian.
  14. "Ball Pit Blues: On Tiffany Midge's "Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's"". Cleveland Review of Books. Retrieved 2021-12-21.
  15. "Simons Public Humanities Fellowship". The Hall Center for the Humanities. University of Kansas. 2019. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  16. "Simons Public Humanities Fellow 2019: Tiffany Midge" (PDF). Communiqué. The Hall Center for the Humanities, University of Kansas. Spring 2019. p. 15.
  17. Carr, Tara (10 March 2017). "National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum honors prominent performers and artists at 2017 Western Heritage Awards®" (Press release). National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
  18. Bauer, Jennifer K. (27 April 2016). "Moscow's poet laureate to read from new collection". Inland 360. Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
  19. "Tiffany Midge Wins Kenyon Review Earthworks Prize for Indigenous Poetry". The Kenyon Review. 5 February 2013.
  20. Strom, Karen M. (1994). "First Book Awards for Poetry from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas". Hanksville.

Further reading