Greg Sarris In Conversation with Blaise Zerega

LIVE! From City Lights

City Lights, ALTA Journal, & Heyday Books celebrate the publication of "The Forgetters: Stories" by Greg Sarris (Heyday Books). Purchase books by Greg Sarris here: https://citylights.com/?search_type=author&s=Greg+Sarris Celebrated storyteller & tribal leader Greg Sarris offers a contemplative & enchanting story cycle in "The Forgetters," a collection that blends into an unsuspected harmony shimmering with waking life, human & animal forms, & eras bygone & still-to-come. Borrowing from the cadence of Native American creation stories & the enchantment of magical realism, these tales combine to reveal the foibles & folly that beset us & the lessons that recall us to ourselves & the world. "The Forgetters" excavates multilayered tales of California’s Indigenous exiles, camp workers, shapeshifters, & medicine people as they interweave with the paths of settlers, migrants, & other wayfarers across the arc of recent centuries & beyond. Narrated by the enigmatic crow sisters, Question Woman & Answer Woman, this collection returns to Sonoma Mountain & traverses the homelands of the Coast Miwok & Southern Pomo. Rooted in today’s Marin & Sonoma counties, these transporting tales glimmer with an intimate connection to place & past—from ancient mythic time when all the animals were people to a speculative future when the people return as environmental refugees to the mountain from which they came. Greg Sarris is serving his sixteenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria & his first term as board chair for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. His publications include "Keeping Slug Woman Alive" (1993), "Grand Avenue" (1994, reissued 2015), "Watermelon Nights" (1998, reissued 2021), "How a Mountain Was Made" (2017, published by Heyday), and "Becoming Story" (2022, published by Heyday). Greg lives & works in Sonoma County. Visit his website at: greg-sarris.com Blaise Zerega is Alta Journal’s editorial director. His journalism has appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio (deputy editor & part of founding team), WIRED (managing editor), the New Yorker, Forbes, & other publications. Additionally, he was the editor of Red Herring magazine, once the bible of Silicon Valley. Originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation