CATE 2008 Major Speakers

March 7-9, 2008
Long Beach Convention Center, Long Beach, CA

Ben Mikaelsen

Author, Ben Mikaelsen, is winner of the International Reading Association Award and the Western Writer’s Golden Spur Award. His novels have been nominated to and have won many state Reader’s Choice awards. These novels include Rescue Josh McGuire, Sparrow Hawk Red, Stranded, Countdown, Petey, Touching Spirit Bear, Red Midnight and Tree Girl. His novel’s, Rescue Josh McGuire, Petey and Touching Spirit Bear have been optioned for screen use.

Ben’s articles and photos appear in numerous magazines around the world, and he has been featured on national TV with Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures and in Boy’s Life magazine. Ben lives in a log cabin near Bozeman, Montana, with a 700-pound black bear that he adopted and has raised for over twenty years.

Sena Jeter Naslund

Sena Jeter Naslund is Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville, Program Director of the Spalding University brief-residency MFA in Writing, and current Kentucky Poet Laureate.

Recipient of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction Award, she is cofounder of The Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-Lis Press. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Sena is the award-winning author of Ahab's Wife and Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette.

Victor Villaseñor

A gifted and accomplished speaker, Victor Villaseñor, in his candid and heartfelt manner, brings a fresh perspective to a number of universal themes. He talks about the importance of family, the strength of family and of women, pride in heritage, personal dignity, perseverance, and world peace. Victor talks about the power of the written word, and dedication to education and personal achievement.

In demand throughout the country as a motivational and inspirational speaker, Victor Villaseñor passionately and openly talks about his own life obstacles as he addresses the difficulties of growing up feeling lost between two worlds, in a constant struggle to find common ground between the culture of his Mexican-Indian-European ancestors and his family’s newly adopted American homeland. He talks about the learning problems that classified him “stupid”, and that he was later diagnosed as severely dyslexic. Victor relates how he felt being psychologically beaten down so much that he was going crazy, and how to channel personal rage into something constructive in life.

Villaseñor has appeared at colleges, universities, high schools, elementary and middle schools, libraries, juvenile correction facilities, prisons, and specialty conferences. He has been a guest speaker at the Smithsonian Institute, and the US State Department in Washington D.C., and keynote speaker at political and teacher conferences. When Victor speaks he attracts standing room only crowds, and when he ends everyone is standing and applauding wildly, many with tears in their eyes.

Tess Gallagher

Tess Gallagher is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, screenplay writer, and translator.

Her most recent books include Distant Rain, conversations with Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi (Eastern Washington University Press), a poetry collection Dear Ghosts, (Graywolf Press), and Soul Barnacles (U. of Michigan Press), a literary memoir about her life with the international short story writer, Raymond Carver. Previous poetry collections include Moon Crossing Bridge and Amplitude: New and Selected Poems.

Tess lives in Port Angeles, Washington.

N. Scott Momaday

Author - Native American Scholar - Poet

Referred to as “the dean of American Indian writers” by The New York Times, Scott Momaday holds an important place in the American literary arts. A poet, playwright, artist, essayist and novelist, Momaday crafts — in language and imagery — majestic landscapes of a sacred culture.
Momaday was the first Native American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, House Made of Dawn. His brilliant use of language has garnered him countless awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Autry Museum of Western Heritage Humanities Prize, a prize from the Academy of American Poets and the “Mondello,” Italy’s highest literary honor.

“Dr. Momaday’s presence on campus and in our community was greeted with such deep appreciation and interest it was stunning. Every single seat in our lecture hall was filled; students opted to sit on the floor just to listen to his voice. Scott Momaday is a treasure, not only to the Native American community, but to the American community and to our world community as a powerful voice of where we have been and where we are going. Stunning.” ---- Arizona State University

But it is through the spoken word that his dedication to his people’s heritage is most profoundly felt. Born a Kiowa in the Oklahoma Dustbowl, Momaday was raised on reservations in the Southwest, steeped in the oral tradition. “If I do not speak with care,” he has said, “my words are wasted. If I do not listen with care, words are lost.”

In his lectures, Momaday brings the oral tradition to life. “His complete control of his rich voice captivates any audience privileged to hear him.” (St. John’s College)

Momaday is the founder and Chair of The Buffalo Trust, a non-profit foundation for the preservation and restoration of Native American culture and heritage. The Trust promotes the sharing of story, song, art and history in Native communities all across the U.S. Above all, it provides young Native Americans with opportunities to experience and lay claim to their inheritance, to define themselves in terms of their collective and individual cultural identity.

A senior scholar at The School of American Research in Sante Fe, Momaday has held tenured teaching posts at UC Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of Arizona. He presently teaches a class on Oral Tradition at Sante Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts. He has also been an NPR commentator and was a founding Trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian. In 2004 Momaday was named a UNESCO Artist for Peace, in recognition of his outstanding achievements as a writer and painter and his efforts to safeguard Native American heritage.

His works of fiction include In the Bear’s House (which includes his own paintings), The Way to Rainy Mountain and The Ancient Child. His collections of poetry include In the Presence of the Sun and The Gourd Dancer. He is the author of The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages; his memoir, The Names; the children’s book, Circle of Wonder: A Native American Christmas Story; and two plays, Children of the Sun and The Indolent Boys. He is currently working on a new novel.

Behind it all beats the heart of the oral storyteller, keeping alive — in myths and memories — the people persecuted and the land lost. “In the oral tradition,” says Momaday, “stories are not told merely to entertain or instruct. They are told to be believed. Stories are realities lived and believed. They are true.”