photo credit: Larry Dean
Erika T. Wurth
Erika T. Wurth is thirty-one and lives in Iowa City, Iowa. She
is
mixed blood (Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee). She teaches Creative Writing
at Western Illinois
University in Macomb, Illinois. Her poetry manuscript, Indian Trains, will
be published by West End Press, through the University of New Mexico in
October of this year.
Erika has a collection of poetry, a collection of short stories and a
novel. Her work is about small town Indians; about community,
and
family - about thieves, prostitutes, train stealers, drug dealers,
loners, jerks, dreaming alcoholics and about the ones who did
everything
but all of that. It is about an entirely new tribe; Urban mixed bloods
of multiple tribes who are respectful of where their ancestors and
family have come from but who are increasingly going towards Urban
Powwows, Native American Church, Indian bars, and Urban Native
organizations for cultural
fulfillment, rather than only to reservations. It is about
seventy percent of the Indian population - the
truly unsung peoples of America.
Erika was born in L.A. on August 13 1975, to Merle and Ron
Wurth.
Merle was raised just outside of Houston, Texas, and lived with her
parents and four siblings in a small house on the outskirts of a park.
Merle's father was a park ranger, and her mother (Margaritte), once a
factory worker and a blues singer, raised her children, worked
with her husband in the park, and later, in order to help finance
Merle's education, worked as a janitor in her high school. Margaritte's
family had come down from Oklahoma in the early 1900's for work. Some
were ranch hands, others railroad workers, and her own mother had
worked as a prostitute for Margaritte's father's mother, Anna Mae. Anna
Mae was a pimp, a Catholic, and a traditional Chickasaw who
also
followed her husband's Apache traditions. Margaritte was abandoned by
both parents, and raised by Anna Mae.
Both Erika's parent's professions originated from film. After watching
numerous films involving synchronized
swimming, Merle decided that she wanted to be a dancer. Her father
built her a dance school on old property and this is what she does to
this day. Ron (a European mix) was one of a long line of alcoholics,
and grew up with his parents and sister in a duplex with his
cousin's family on Staten Island. After watching Superman, at the age
of 6, and subsequently jumping off the roof of his house, and breaking
his leg, he decided that he wanted to find a way to fly. He grew up to
be an aerospace engineer. They met in Houston, married, eventually
moved to Colorado and had two children. Both were some of the first in
their families to not only graduate with four year degrees, but also to
graduate with high school diplomas.
Erika grew up between two communities, one which
was slowly yuppifying (Evergreen) and one which was still solidly blue
collar
(Idaho Springs), which made most of her family and community life
a mix of low and middle class experiences. Erika was bussed to
Idaho Springs for school, which was a mix of working class
white,
Indian and Mexican people. She received her bachelor's degree from Fort
Lewis College in
Durango, Colorado (a school with over 250 represented tribes), her
Masters degree
at the University of Toledo, and her Ph.d in Creative Writing and
Literature at the University of Colorado.
Erika has worked with Lorna Dee Cervantes, Marcia Douglas,
Marilyn Krysl, Junot Diaz and Sherman Alexie.
Book length publications
Indian Trains
(Poetry manuscript, West End Press, 2007, pending)
Whitehorse Love
(Collection of short stories)
Whitehorse Love is
a
collection about a group of communities living in six degrees of
separation. Mainly based in Idaho Springs Colorado, it moves to stories
about people from a variety of Indian Communities living in different
parts of Colorado and the Southwest (mainly New Mexico). Although not
all of the characters know each other directly, everybody in the
collection is six degrees or fewer away from one another. There are
twelves stories in the collection, with varying points of
view. There's Justine, who, after her father dies, must go
home
and face her Christianized Texanized family who she loves, but has
little in common with. And Julia, the small town mixed blood raised in
a foster home who, despite her poverty and pain, despite the fact that
her first love killed himself in a game of Russian roulette, feels that
she will get out - but who wants at least one more night of small town
adventure; hitchhiking in the mountains with her two friends, "the
Christies." The mission: hitch over to the neighboring town, and visit
Christy #1's drunken boyfriend for two seconds before hitching back
home again in the snow. Then there are Cary and Sam; two Indians from
radically different backgrounds. Cary, a wild working class party
animal. Sam: a middle class, good grade earning kid who falls
desperately in love with Cary. And Mathew. A street Indian who came to
Fort Lewis College years ago to make something of himself, and who
instead, after one evening at the wrong party, slowly degenerates for
no real reason. Or Nick, the Pueblo artist and reformed alcoholic whose
life has finally come to a better place - only to have a terrible
motorcycle accident that prevents him from doing the one thing that has
alway given him peace and beauty in his life, his art. And
there's Mike, who is obsessed with two things: a newspaper clipping
about a girl who, in his own words, "gets away with it" and with
getting ahead, no matter the cost.
Crazyhorse's Girlfriend (Novel)
Crazyhorse's Girlfriend
is a
novel about Margaritte, a tough little loner who has grown up in a home
where her father is an alcoholic, who clings desperately to her twin
siblings, her Stephen King novels and her immediate and extended
family. The novel opens with a trip to Disneyland, which, to her
parents, is part of living the American dream. However, the trip, from
the beginning, is delayed and ultimately fails as a family vacation.
Margaritte's cousin calls to mock their trip repeatedly, her father
duct tapes his suitcase closed multiple times delaying the trip, and
the twins and their obsession with their Barbies make the entire family
insane. When they get there, Margaritte's father drinks, the twins cry
and Margaritte's mother wishes she were anywhere but where she is,
resulting in a battle between the two on the last night that ends in
tragedy. The second chapter is about Margaritte's wacky born again,
Catholic-Indian, nuevo-traditionalist extended family. After a
Christmas involving hockey games, mind bending family stories and
general family mayhem, a secret is revealed that threatens to tear the
family apart. In the third chapter, Margaritte falls in love - and
becomes a drug dealer. Mike, who is Indian by birth, but adopted out to
a white family, is intrigued with Margaritte and their mutual love of
reading and fascinated with her motley crue of Mexican, Indian
and
working class white friends. However, after a short romance, Mike and
Margaritte are unable to make their worlds coincide successfully, and
Margaritte's heart is broken when he leaves her behind, and goes to
college. In chapter four, Margaritte is trying to settle into a better
life. She's stopped selling drugs and has become friends with two
Indian girls who live together. One of them has a cousin, Jack, who
lives with them and who is trying desperately to hide the fact that he
is gay. His pain over not being able to be truly out in the Indian
world, or truly Indian in the gay world, tears himself and all those
around him, apart. In chapter five, Margaritte is going to community
college and working in a grocery store. But a chance encounter with a
fellow bagger changes her life, and her boyfriend's, permanently. In
chapter six, her dying father moves her to Durango, Colorado, where she
tries to begin a new life.
Magazine and Anthology Publications
"Weirdos, Writers, and the Non-Crisis Mid-Twenties Crisis" (Non-fiction
essay) Generation What?
(May 2006, pending)
"How Ed Learned to Dance" (Fiction) Fiction Magazine
Vol. 20 #1 (2006)
"My Face, So Close to His" (Fiction) Pembroke #38 (2006)
"Whitehorse Love" (Fiction) Fiction
Magazine Vol. 19 #1 (2005)
"The Walker" (Fiction) Raven
Chronicles Vol. 10 #2 (2001)
"(Re)Naming Me" (Poetry) SAIL
Vol. 12 #2 (2002)
"Pastels Swimming Together" and "Raven Gets a Kick Out of You" (Poetry)
AICRJ Vol.
24 #3 (2000)
Readings
University of Iowa, Native American Arts & Culture week (April
2007, pending)
CUNY, Mercantile Library (May 2007, pending)
Western Illinois University, Faculty Reading (2006)
University of Iowa, Native American Literature class (2206)
Fiction Magazine, Fiction writers (2005)
Representation
Jennifer Lyons at Lyons & Pande International, LLC (please
contact Jennifer at www.lyonspande.com for
additional publication information)
links
"Whitehorse
Love" (Fiction Magazine)
*** all information and material presented on this website is the
property of Erika T. Wurth.
