Eric Gansworth--Biographical Information
Eric Gansworth, A Brief Biography
Eric Gansworth, an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation, was born and raised at the Tuscarora Indian Nation in Western New York. He is a Professor of English and Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He earned an AAS in Electroencephalography from Niagara Country Community College and a BA and MA in English at State University College at Buffalo.
His novels, Indian Summers (Michigan State University Press 1998), Smoke Dancing(MSUP 2004), Mending Skins (University of Nebraska Press 2005), the collections of poems, Nickel Eclipse: Iroquois Moon (MSUP 2000) and A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function (Syracuse University Press 2008), and Breathing the Monster Alive (Bright Hill) poems, personal essays, all feature paintings as integral parts of their narratives. His first full length performance/play, Re-Creation Story, will premiere as a staged reading in 2008’s Native Theater Festival at the Public Theater in New York City. His next book, From the Western Door to the Lower West Side, is a volume of poems in response to images by social documentary photographer, Milton Rogovin, and it will be published by White Pine in 2009. An anthology he has edited, Sovereign Bones(Nation Books, 2007), focuses on Creative Non-fiction from Indigenous writers and artists exploring the link between art and cultural survival.
Gansworth began his creative work as a visual artist, and eventually expanded to writing as a way of furthering the narratives he had developed visually. His first solo exhibition, “Nickel Eclipse: Iroquois Moon,” opened in 1999 at the Olean Public Library and an expanded show opened at the Castellani Museum in 2000. A solo exhibition, “Breathing the Monster Alive” opened at Bright Hill Center in 2006. A collaborative two-artist show, with sculptor Larry Plant, opened in 2005 at the Stuyvessant Gallery in Buffalo, NY. A new solo exhibition, “Cross-PolliNation,” opened at the Vogt Gallery at Canisius College in February. His work has been in group shows across New York State, including: “Revisiting Turtle Island,” at the Niagara Arts and Culture Center; “Native Vision: Art through Haudenosaunee Eyes,” at the Fanette-Goldman Gallery; "Art Creations from Tuscarora," at Neto Hatinakwe Onkwehowe; the "Keepers of the Western Door" exhibition, co-sponsored by CEPA Gallery and the World University Games, and in a follow-up exhibition, "In the Shadow of the Eagle," at the Castellani Museum; in "Teaching Metaphors" at the Niagara County Community College; and in "Sharing the Visions," at Hartwick College in Oneonta. One of his paintings was the cover of Sherman Alexie's book First Indian on the Moon. Others have been included in the history text As Long as the Grass Shall Grow and Rivers Flow (Harcourt Brace) the art history text Pictures and Power: Haudenosaunee and Iroquoian Paintings and Visual Representation, A.D. 166-2004(University of Oklahoma Press), the Iroquois Voices, Iroquois Visions anthology (Bright Hill), and the journal, The Cream City Review. In 2006, the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Canisius College commissioned a painting from Gansworth, which is now permanently on display in the Bouwhuis Library on the campus. He served eleven years on the Board of Directors of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center and has served terms on panels for the Arts Council of Buffalo and Erie County and the New York State Council on the Arts Literature Panel, and on the Artists Advisory Committee for the New York Foundation for the Arts. He was also an artist in the Herd About Buffalo Project.
Work of his -- fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and visual art -- has appeared or is forthcoming in the journals, The Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, Third Coast,Blueline, Stone Canoe, Cold Mountain Review, Many Mountains Moving, Poetry International, Yellow Medicine Review, Shenandoah, The Cream City Review, Slipstream,phati'tude, UCLA's American Indian Culture and Research Journal and American Indian Quarterly, in the anthologies, Growing Up Native American (Morrow), Blue Dawn, Red Earth (Doubleday) Iroquois Voices, Iroquois Visions (Bright Hill), The Second Word Thursdays Anthology (Bright Hill), Stories for Winter Nights (White Pine), Fishing for Chickens (Persea), Genocide of the Mind (The Nation Books), Eating Fire, Tasting Blood (Thunder’s Mouth), Children of the Dragonfly (University of Arizona Press) and Nothing but the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature(Prentice Hall), on Roadkillbasa, a performance audio tape and in Quartet, a just buffalo literary center, inc. chapbook.
A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function was voted to the number 3 position on the National Book Critics Circle “Good Reads” List in the Poetry Category for Spring 2008. Mending Skins won a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Award in 2006. Gansworth was invited to write the entry for American Indian Literature in the Encyclopedia of New York State. He is a member of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers & Storytellers, the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, is listed in the Directory of American Poets & Fiction Writers and has received Writer-in-Residence awards from, The Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities, just buffalo literary center, inc. as well as at his home institution, Canisius College. He was also awarded an Artist’s Residency at the Seaside Institute, in Seaside, Florida and has received a Special Opportunities Stipend Award from the New York Foundation for the Arts and an Individual Artist’s Grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation. In 2008, he was a keynote speaker at the Native American Literature Symposium.
Gansworth's work is a commentary on the oral tradition existing within Haudenosaunee culture and its fluid nature. He uses iconography recognizable in the context of the mythic Haudenosaunee world, yet alters it to reflect issues relevant to a more contemporary Haudenosaunee existence.