Interviews with Six Native Women Writers, Part 2: Tiffany Midge and Linda Rodriguez

On October 9, 2017, World Literature Today sat down with six writers (in three groups of two) during the 25th anniversary “Returning the Gift: Native & Indigenous Literary Festival” held that week at the University of Oklahoma’s Norman campus. The theme for the festival was “Gathering at Our Headwaters,” and water was a prominent element in the May 2017 “New Native Writing” issue of WLT, to which all six authors contributed. 

Part two in our three part series features Tiffany Midge and Linda Rodriguez. You can watch an interview with Allison Hedge Coke and Arigon Starr in part one.

Tiffany Midge is a humor columnist for Indian Country Today and a poetry editor at The Rumpus. Her book The Woman Who Married a Bear won the Kenyon Review Earthworks Indigenous Poetry Prize. Her work is featured in McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Waxwing, The Butter, Okey-Pankey, and Moss. She is Hunkpapa Lakota and allergic to horses. Her creative nonfiction piece “Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s” was published in the New Native Writing issue of WLT.

Linda Rodriguez’s newest book, Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, is based on her popular workshop. Her Skeet Bannion mystery novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and her books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart’s Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as the St. Martin’s Press / Malice Domestic Best First Novel. Her poem “Sitting in the Car Waiting” was published in the New Native Writing issue of WLT.