UNM Press rolls out new series promoting Native American experimental and genre fiction

In 2016,

Métis author Katherena Vermette’s debut novel The Break was published in her homeland of Canada. The novel, which tells the interlocking stories of multiple generations of women in the same Métis family after one of them witnesses a crime in a barren stretch of land outside her house in Winnipeg, was a breakout success in Canada and won a spate of awards, including being shortlisted for the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award.

Despite that, when her follow-up novel The Strangers was published several years later, it was unable to find a U.S. publisher in spite of what some have described as a “second Native American renaissance” in Indigenous literature.

It’s now found a home more than 1,100 miles from Winnipeg at Albuquerque-based University of New Mexico Press as part of a new series the press launched this spring called Native Edge, which will feature new and rereleased works of genre fiction and experimental writing from Native authors.

The Strangers is the first of two books the series launched this spring along with a republishing of mystery writer Martin Cruz Smith’s 1970 alternate history novel The

Indians Won.

“Just the fact that Katherena Vermette could not get an American publisher shows you that there’s a need for publishers that aren’t quite as driven by the marketplace. And that’s where University of New Mexico Press comes in.” — DAVID HESKA WANBLI WEIDEN

The series editor is Colorado-based novelist David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Sicangu Lakota Nation), whose 2020 crime novel Winter Counts sparked its own resurgence of Indigenous crime writing. (A sequel to Winter Counts, titled Wisdom Corner, is scheduled to be published by Ecco Press in 2025.)

“The idea from the beginning was to make it a combination of rediscovered works of Native genre fiction and brand-new original works,” says UNM Press director Stephen Hull.

Hull says he approached Weiden after hearing a talk he gave about the history of Native mystery writing at a Mystery Writers of America meeting. Weiden says he initially hesitated because of his other commitments, which currently include serving as an Indigenous artist in residence at Brown University.

Ultimately, “the opportunity to really help shape Native literature in a very special way was just too great to pass up,” he says.

Genre fiction will be interpreted broadly by Native Edge and will include mystery, fantasy, science-fiction, noir, and experimental fiction as well as works of nonfiction. Hull says the focus was chosen in part because genre works are not published as broadly as Native literary and commercial fiction.

“Native American writers are having a bit of a renaissance, but I don’t think that means they’re always getting the profile they deserve,” says UNM Press sales director Don Redpath.

Weiden notes the series will feature authors who might not be able to find a home at a larger press.

“There’s a need for a series like ours that’s willing to take a chance and step in when the larger houses are not able to publish what I think are really worthy books,” he says.

Despite having more resources, Weiden says (with many exceptions) mainstream publishers are often less willing to take risks on a more experimental work.

“Just the fact that Katherena Vermette could not get an American publisher shows you that there’s a need for publishers that aren’t quite as driven by the marketplace,” he says. “And that’s where University of New Mexico Press comes in.”

The Indians Won

Hull says the goal for the series’ reissued books is to revive “really worthy books that are ripe for rediscovery,” a description that fits The Indians Won like a glove.

Best known for his 10-novel series following Russian detective Arkady Renko during the Cold War, beginning in 1981 with Gorky Park, Smith was born in 1942 to a Pueblo mother active in the Native American rights movement.

The Indians Won is one of several books by Smith featuring Native American themes, including Stallion Gate and Nightwing. At barely 150 pages, The Indians Won isa slim and thought-provoking look at an alternate United States where following the Battle of the Little Bighorn,

“Native American writers are having a bit of a renaissance, but I don’t think that means they’re always getting the profile they deserve.”

— DON REDPATH, UNM PRESS SALES DIRECTOR

Native American tribes band together against the

U.S. Army and take control of the Plains states, dividing the U.S. into two coastal nations.

“It’s this really interesting exploration of what might have been,” Redpath says.

The book travels back and forth in time between the 1870s, when the tribes are starting to form an alliance, and events 100 years later, when both states have become nuclear powers and appear to be on the brink of another war.

Weiden says he pushed heavily for the book to be included, which was out of print and that he had to buy a used copy for $200 when he was hunting for it years earlier.

The Indians Won should be a must-read for lovers of alternate history. Because of its short length, the book offers only tantalizing glimpses of what could be fascinating, standalone novels, such as a Native American alliance with the independent Mormon Deseret nation, and naval expansion from the U.S. that without control of the center of the continent becomes a strong seafaring power and absorbs island nations in both the Atlantic and the Pacific into the country.

Some of the plot points in the novel strain credulity and more than 50 years after its first publication, it in some ways feels dated (particularly regarding its treatment of female characters). But the book is best read as a thought experiment and not a literal exploration of U.S. history. As a way to view the familiar through new eyes, it’s a tour de force.

The Strangers

The Strangers follows three women in the same Canadian Indigenous family who are separated from each other. Phoenix is pregnant in a youth correctional facility after committing a horrific act of violence against one of the main character’s in The Break. (Having read Vermette’s first novel will help readers understand how the characters got where they are, but isn’t necessary in order to appreciate The Strangers on its own merits). As soon as her son is born, he is taken away from her and adopted by his paternal grandmother.

Cedar-sage, Phoenix’s younger sister, is living in a foster home after both she, Phoenix, and a third sister who died before the start of the series were removed from their mother’s custody. She then goes to live with her father and his new wife, both virtual strangers to her.

Meanwhile Elsie, their mother, is struggling to battle her way out of decades-long addiction that has cost her both her children and the trust of her family members. The book also goes into the past to tell the story of Elsie’s late mother, Margaret, who curdled into bitterness after her dreams for a better life were cut short as a young woman and loves her family in a fierce, complicated way.

The summary risks making the book seem like an exercise in trauma tourism, but it couldn’t be anything further. Vermette’s novel is an arresting exploration of the fruits of centuries of chronic disenfranchisement of Canada’s Indigenous population that gives her characters dignity without diminishing any of their flaws. Each woman is ultimately responsible for forging her own way forward in a world that can be cruel but still brims with the possibility of connection.

Vermette’s novels are on caliber with Tommy Orange’s bestsellers There, There and this year’s follow-up Wandering Stars, which use a similar narrative structure and deserve to be much more widely read in the U.S. With any luck, UNM Press can help boost her profile and hopefully help her third and final novel in the saga, The Circle, make its way across the border as well.

The final word

The press anticipates publishing two to four Native Edge titles a year, Hull says. Title selections will generally be made by Hull, Weiden, and senior acquisitions editor Elise Mchugh. “It’s a collective vision,” Weiden says. The third book in the series will be a novel called Panther Creek by Arizona writer Tom Holm (Cherokee Nation) set in 1920s Tulsa, Oklahoma. It follows two tribal investigators who butt heads with the local sheriff’s office while looking into a series of murders of young Native women.

“It’s a really terrific piece of historical fiction that paints an indelible picture of early 20th century Native life in Oklahoma,” Hull says.

Will Native Edge give these titles the readership boost they both richly deserve? That remains to be seen.

Weiden says the reception to Native Edge has been positive, “but we have not gotten a great deal of publicity thus far, and that’s sort of the nature of academic publishing.”

That’s made more difficult by the fact larger publications often do not review reissued books, he noted. (That doesn’t seem to stop titles from the New York Review Books from receiving widespread coverage).

But in a world where Killers of the Flower Moon became an Oscar-winning blockbuster and Native-helmed projects like the Reservation Dogs streaming series have become breakout hits, it’s impossible to say there isn’t widespread interest in Indigenous stories. So why not try?