Joseph Bruchac

Joseph Bruchac or Sozap, his Abenaki name, is an award-winning poet, novelist, and storyteller, who follows the traditional ways. His work reflects his culture in emphasing that storytelling is natural and necessary to all people. He has been a storyteller-in-residence at the Onondaga Indian School and the Akwesasne Mohawk School.

For over thirty years Joseph Bruchac has been creating poetry, short stories, novels, anthologies and music that reflect his Abenaki Indian heritage and Native American traditions.

He is the author of more than 120 books for children and adults. The best selling Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children and others of his “Keepers” series, with its remarkable integration of science and folklore, continue to receive critical acclaim and to be used in classrooms throughout the country.

Joseph lives in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry. Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished.