Author Diane Wilson will be available on ZOOM to discuss book

 

Cook County Higher Education invites you to settle in on Sunday, April 16 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. for a community conversation with Author and Educator Diane Wilson about her award-winning book The Seed Keeper. Bring your questions.

The Seed Keeper is a masterfully written story of reawakening, remembering our original relationship with seeds and, through them, with our ancestors. The story follows three generations (1862-2002) of Dakota women as they struggle to preserve their way of life and their sacrifices to protect what is most important. “In her Author’s Note, Diane Wilson writes that the book was inspired by a story she’d heard while participating in the Dakhota Commemorative March, a 150-mile walk to honor the Dakhota people who were forcibly removed from Minnesota in 1863 in the aftermath of the US-Dakhota War. The women on that original march had little time to prepare for their removal but knew they would have to find a way to feed their families in whatever place they were being sent, so they sewed seeds into the hems of their skirts and hid more in their pockets.” “Wilson’s 2021 novel, The Seed Keeper, (Milkweed Editions) received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction. Her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (Borealis Books) won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her 2011 nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (Borealis Books) was awarded the 2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Wilson’s middle-grade biography: Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, was an Honor selection for the 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies, including: Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations (2021); We Are Meant to Rise (2021); and A Good Time for the Truth (2016). Wilson is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous nonprofit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.”

To register go to the Cook County Higher Education website.