Mona Susan Power facts for kids

Mona Susan Power (Standing Rock Dakota, born 1961) is an Native American author based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her debut novel, The Grass Dancer (1994), received the 1995 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Best First Fiction.

Early life

Power was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is a Yantonai Dakota enrolled citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North & South Dakota. Her mother, Susan Kelly Power, Gathering of Stormclouds Woman (Standing Rock Dakota, 1925–2022), was an activist who helped found the American Indian Center of Chicago. Susan's mother, Mona's grandmother, Josephine Gates Kelly was three-term tribal chairperson for the Stand Rock Sioux Tribe. Mona's great-grandmother was Nellie Two Bear Gates. She is a descendant of Sioux Chief Mato Nupa (Two Bears).

Power's father, Carleton Gilmore Power, a Euro-American from New England, worked in publishing as a salesman. One of his great-great-grandfathers was governor of New Hampshire. She heard stories that inspired her imagination from both sides.

Education

Power attended Chicago schools, then earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School.

In 1992 she entered the MFA program at the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Writing career

After a short career in law, Power decided to become a writer. She worked as a technical writer and editor, reserving her creative writing for off hours.

Her 1994 debut novel, The Grass Dancer, has a complex plot about four generations of Native Americans, with action stretching from 1864 to 1986.

Power has written several other books as well. Her short fiction has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, Voice Literary Supplement, Ploughshares, Story, and The Best American Short Stories 1993. She teaches at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Power's most recent novel, A Council of Dolls, was released in 2023. The novel was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction.

Honors and awards

The Grass Dancer won the 1995 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Best First Fiction. Powers won a United States Artists Fellowship.