Leslie Marmon Silko: The Turquoise Ledge October 22, 2010

The Turquoise Ledge is a refreshingly original self-portrait by the novelist deemed by Larry McMurtry, "the finest prose writer of her generation." For her first work of non-fiction, Silko has put together a beautiful series of observations from her daily walks through the Sonoran desert outside of Tucson, where she lives, personal revelations, and such compelling stories of the creatures sharing the landscape with her that writer Joy Williams calls The Turquoise Ledge "a classic of desert writing." She adds, "In these end times when humankind's disrespect for the earth has reached murderous depths of true mental illness, Silk's fresh, vivid... correspondence with beings so refreshingly not-us is as restorative as desert rain. She blesses us..."

This is a deeply personal contemplation of the enormous spiritual power of the natural world.

Leslie Marmon Silko has a mix of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and White ancestry. She grew up at the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico, and considers herself Laguna. While at the University of New Mexico Silko had published a short story, "The Man to Send Rain Clouds", which was awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities Discovery Grant. In 1974 she published Laguna Woman, a book of poems. In 1978 her novel Ceremony, described by Sherman Alexie as "the greatest novel in Native American literature" appeared, and subsequently sold over a million copies in paperback. Other works by Silko are Storyteller, Almanac of the Dead, and Yellow Woman and the Beauty of Spirit.

hosted by Lakota Harden and Gregg McVicar
of KPFA Radio's Bay Native Circle

$10 advance tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/125499
t: 800-838-3006 or: Pegasus Books, Pendragon, Mrs. Dalloway's, Moe's, Walden Pond, DIESEL, A Bookstore, and Modern Times ($12 door)
Information: www.kpfa.org/events KPFA Radio benefit

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