Gordon Henry
henryg@msu.edu
517-884-4427
C621 Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
FacultyEnglishAmerican Indian and Indigenous Studies
Professor
Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies, American Indian and Indigenous Studies
Department of English
Biography
Gordon Henry is an enrolled member of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation in Minnesota.
Dr. Henry is also the Inaugural Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in North American Indian and Indigenous Literary Studies and a Professor in the English Department at Michigan State University, where he teaches American Indian Literature, Creative Writing and the Creative Process, in Integrative Arts and Humanities.
He serves as Senior Editor of the American Indian Studies Series (and the series sub-imprint Mukwa Enewed) at Michigan State University Press. Under his editorship the AISS has published research and creative work by an array of scholars, working in a variety of disciplines, related to the larger field of American Indian Studies.
Seven years ago, while serving as Director of the Native American Institute at Michigan State, he founded, along with Ellen Cushman, the Native American Youth Film Institute. As an offshoot of that project Professor Henry is working with the NAI and the Michigan Inter-Tribal Council, on Indigistory, a community based digital storytelling project.
Gordon is also a published poet and fiction writer. In 1995 he received an American Book Award for his novel the Light People and his poetry, fiction and essays have been published extensively, in the U.S. and Europe. In 2004, he co-published an educational reader on Ojibwe people with George Cornell. In 2007, Henry published a mixed-genre collection, titled The Failure of Certain Charms, with Salt Publishing, out of the U.K. He also co-edited a collection of essays on American Indian Literature, titled Stories through Theory <->Theory through Stories in 2009. In 2018 he published a co-edited volume of graphic literature, titled Not (Just) (An)other. Also, in 2018, his collection The Failure of Charms was translated into Catalan, as El Fracas de Certs Encanteris, for Balandra Ediciones, in Valencia, Spain. This past fall (2019) the University of New England Press released Afterlives of Indigenous Archives, co-edited by Gordon and Dartmouth Professor Ivy Schweitzer. Gordon’s poetry, fiction and critical writing has been published extensively internationally. His writing has appeared in journals and anthologies, in translation, in Spain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the U.K. and Germany.
Professor Henry was appointed Gordon Russell, Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College in each of the past two years. While there he taught courses in Re-mapping Tribal Narratives, the American Indian Novel, Indian Country Today and Digital Storytelling.
Professor Henry is also co-Pi on a strategic planning grant dedicated to a Center for Anishinaabe Languages, Literature and Storytelling. He is also serving as Community Coordinator on an MSU Mellon grant geared to producing, language programs, activities and curriculum in Anishinaabe communities.
Projects
Courses
ENG210: Introduction to the Study of English
ENG228: Introduction to Fiction Writing
ENG354: Native American Literature
ENG428: Advanced Fiction Writing
ENG476: American Authors
Publications
The Failure of Certain Charms and Other Disparate Signs of Life. London: Salt Press.
Co-ed. Stories Thru Theories / Theories Thru Stories: North American Indian Writing, Storytelling and Critique. Nieves Pascual Soler and Silvia Martinez Falquina, coeditors. Michigan State University Press, 2007.
“The Silver Saxophone, Masks of Pain and the People in the Hills.” Pembroke Magazine. Ed. Jesse Peters. University of North Carolina Pembroke, 2006.
“The Failure of Certain Charms,” “Song for Sisters Who Won’t Let Go,” “Remembering Shadow: The Art of Not Crying,” and “Dodem Dream Song.” Traces in Blood, Bone and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwa Poetry. Ed. Kimberly Blaeser. Bemidji, Minnesota: Loonfeather Press, 2006.
“Sonny’s Wake 2000,” “Simple Four Part Directions for Making Indian Lit,” “October Minnehaha Avenue,” and “Directions to the Sovereign of Entelechy.” Topos: Indigenous Americas: Poetry by Indigenous Peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University, 2006.
The Ojibway. (George Cornell, co-author). Ed. Kenneth Macintosh. North American Indians. Masoncrest Publishing, 2004.
“Harold LaMasque: Via Creativa” and “Spider Charm Variations.” Cream City Review (2003).
“The Prisoner of Haiku.” Children of the Dragonfly. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002.
“Entries into the Autobiographical I.” Here First. Ed. Arnold Krupat. New York: Random House, 2000.
The Light People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Reprinted by Michigan State University Press, 2003.
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