Craig Strete
Craig Kee Strete is a Native American science fiction writer. He is noted for his use of American Indian themes and has had multiple Nebula Award nominations.
He earned his B.A.from Wright State University and his M.F.A. in 1978 at University of California at Irvine.
Beginning in the early 1970s, while working in the Film and Television industry, Strete began writing emotional Native American themed, and science fiction short stories and novellas. He has had three Nebula Award nominations: two for the short stories Time Deer and A Sunday Visit with Great-grandfather and one for the novelette The Bleeding Man.
In 1974 Strete published a magazine dedicated to Native American science fiction, Red Planet Earth.
His play Paint Your Face On A Drowning In The River (originally produced May 16, 1984 by East/West Players in Los Angeles, CA) was the 1984 Dramatists Guild/CBS New Plays Program first place winner.
Strete has published four collections of short fiction: The Bleeding Man and Other Science Fiction Stories If All Else Fails...,Dreams That Burn in the Night and Death Chants.
Fiction writer and playwright. Screenwriter under various pseudonyms; foreign rights and international acquisitions editor, de Knipscheer, 1980--; East West Players Newsletter, managing editor, 1984-85.
Dutch Children's Book award nomination, 1980, for Grootvaders Reisdoel
REANIMUS PRESS NEW RELEASES!!!!!
The Game of Cat and Eagle
A Native American soldier goes to Vietnam on a special mission to win the war — with an eagle...
If All Else Fails
With an Introduction by Jorge Luis Borges.
Craig Strete, one of the few Native American SF authors, picked up three Nebula Award nominations for short SF, two of which are included in this collection of his excellent work.
"The pages reek with despair at the loss of Native American culture .... The narrator of the "All My Statues" is reminded of his "grandfather who died humming all the songs he had kept silent because there was no one left to sing them" (11). In "To See the City" the dead try to escape the concrete prisons of the cities that desecrate the holy places: "Buried animal and ground people were trying to reach out through the cracks in sidewalks. The ground people moved restlessly under the concrete" (36). The television, an embodiment of the white man's control of mass culture, declares the Native American is a figment of the past, not of the present: "We make decisions for you. Take you hand of the silver screen. You are interfering with the projectionist. Yes, we listen, we tell you, you are a book, and having been written, you cannot cancel a line of it" (46).
"Filled with gorgeous lines, evocative images..." —Science Fiction Ruminations
The World in Grandfather's Hands
Eleven-year-old Jimmy is angry, lonely, and homesick. Since Mother moved them from the pueblo where they lived at one with the land, to Grandfather Whitefeather's house in the city after Father's death, Jimmy has been hemmed in by tall buildings, concrete, noisy neighbors, and unfriendly people. The worst part is that there doesn't seem to be a good reason for being here.
"Try to carry the pueblo with you everywhere you go," Grandfather advises. He explains strange things like automatic doors and keeping safe at night, and helps Jimmy find good things like ice cream and the smell of a freshly cut lawn. But Jimmy doesn't understand—or really want to know—how Grandfather can live here, or why Mother thinks it important for Jimmy to live here too. Why should he learn about the world outside the pueblo, when he's sure it will never be home?
In sensitive and eloquent language, Craig Kee Strete captures the desert's beauty and the city's bustling chaos, Jimmy's struggle to live in both worlds, and the hope he finds in Grandfather Whitefeather's gentle wisdom, Mother's courage, and the dreams that sustain them all.
"When you know too much about life as Indians live it, the sadness is somehow always there," says Craig Strete. But there is still what he calls "the heart and soul" of The World In Grandfather's Hands: "Hope which gives courage to look at the night and see things. And the power of dreams which brings day from night."
When Grandfather Journeys Into Winter
The story of the bond between an Indian boy and his grandfather--by turns wry and melodramatic, at once fervent and prosy. At the start, a bantering camaraderie is established between Little Thunder and old Tayhua--which, however, is heavy with irony at the expense of the white man (whose "religious symbols" allegedly include the dollar sign and the TV antenna) and heavily dependent, as well, on an adult play of words. —Kirkus
Dark Journey
by Jim Morrison and Craig Strete
Poetry by Jim Morrison (of The Doors) and Craig Strete.
"I have seen the future and I won't go," says Morrison, staring at the sky as if he saw the words up there somewhere. And the day explodes, rocketting into a long shamanistic shared journey. Words tumble out as we write furiously, thrown together accidentally by the summer. Putting it all down on paper. Poems meant never to be heard except in the dark side of our lives. Stories of the yet to happen, fantasies that bleed and offer no comfort. The future has been to the barricades too many times. The future has been up against the wall so many times that the handwriting on the wall is now on the future. It is on us. We see our own deaths and the deaths of those around us.
A Knife In The Mind
The Tragedy Of MAKONA, Shaman Of Kawdor.
Dreams That Burn in the Night
A collection of Strete's great work, including ones described as "quite brilliant" from a "major talent" by Kirkus Reviews. Also includes collaborations with Jim Morrison (of the Doors) and Michael Bishop.
"On the Way Home, about American Indians (Strete is one) returning after a stint in the army, is grittily unsettling. There's the achingly sad tale of an Indian sorcerer/guardian who invokes aliens from the stars to lift the burden of the white man's oppression. Also: a short, wry, powerful evocation of Old Woman Mountain. As before, then, the Indian stories are stronger than the more standard sf or fantasy. But a raw, satirical edge enlivens the best of the more orthodox pieces: a hilarious stranded astronaut yarn; a future where clothing is obscene; a ghost in a police computer; the dreams rocks dream over the eons. ... Strete, then, is still blazing away in all directions—and scoring an uncomfortable number of hits: strong work from a gifted writer." —Kirkus Reviews
Death Chants
Craig Strete, one of the few Native American SF authors, picked up three Nebula Award nominations for short SF, two of which are included in this collection of his excellent work.
"The pages reek with despair at the loss of Native American culture .... The narrator of the "All My Statues" is reminded of his "grandfather who died humming all the songs he had kept silent because there was no one left to sing them" (11). In "To See the City" the dead try to escape the concrete prisons of the cities that desecrate the holy places: "Buried animal and ground people were trying to reach out through the cracks in sidewalks. The ground people moved restlessly under the concrete" (36). The television, an embodiment of the white man's control of mass culture, declares the Native American is a figment of the past, not of the present: "We make decisions for you. Take you hand of the silver screen. You are interfering with the projectionist. Yes, we listen, we tell you, you are a book, and having been written, you cannot cancel a line of it" (46).
"Filled with gorgeous lines, evocative images..." —Science Fiction Ruminations
Burn Down the Night
An autobiographical novel about the author's drug/sex/oh-wow-heavy '60s friendship with Jim Morrison of The Doors.
"You and me, they are really going to dig us when we're dead. You can't hope to arrive without exile."
—JIM MORRISON
"Burn Down the Night, and light up an era with the neon, mind-splitting sound of rock, the fast and furious sex, the drugs, pills and needles, joints and sugar cubes—life blood and lifeline of a generation that was."
—FANTASTIC FICTION
The Angry Dead
A Native American girl visits family... in a house haunted by ghosts. If All Else Fails
The Bleeding Man and Other Science Fiction Stories
With an introduction by Virginia Hamilton.
The Vermillion Sands of Native American literature.
The heritage of the author is clearly reflected in this unique collection of stories. They range from the representative science fiction of "Into Every Rain, a Little Life Must Fall" in which "wombcops" plugged into computer consoles monitor city streets, to the phantasmagoric, prophetic quality of the title story. There is a wry humor and folk wisdom in "A Sunday Visit with Great-Grandfather", and the influence of Indian lore and legend is powerfully evident in "White Brothers from the Place Where No Man Walks".
My Gun Is Not So Quick
A Private Eye — whose gun is not so quick because he's drowning himself in drink — tries to help a beautiful woman, whose husband has disappeared and may be trying to kill her
The Star Killer
by Sovereign Falconer
"Ted, this is Sam Watson in Legal. We are a little bit troubled by an ad you are running in this week's BACKSTAGE."
"Complaints from the Screen Actor's Guild?"
"Complaints from a number of actors themselves. As individuals. At least six, no seven so far," offered Watson.
"What sort of complaints? The ad's only been out three days."
"Apparently, the ad directs them to read samples of the script on a web page for a movie called FINAL CUT. The actors who've read the samples are the ones who are calling."
"Why?"
"At first, we thought it was a joke. So we logged onto the web site to see what all the fuss was about. There was a brief description of the film's premise. The log line is it's a homicidal film director who kills all the actors who audition for him. The actors who called us were complaining that the script sounded too real!"
"You've got to be kidding!"
"Hey, we're legal. We don't know how to tell jokes over here."
Based in part on assorted facts. Anyone interested in the back story can find back issues of BACKSTAGE EAST with the original ad for the auditions for the movie THE FINAL CUT. No doubt there are many actors in the New York and New Jersey area who survived their auditions for the actual film THE FINAL CUT who can recount their experiences in actual auditions for that film. No claims are made as to the whereabouts of Sovereign Falconer.
To Make Death Love Us
by Sovereign Falconer
A traveling carnival sideshow troupe — a rubber man, a fat lady, a midget, a blind woman who can read print with her fingers, a strong man, and the hustler who runs the show — are trapped in a truck that has careened off a mountain road and come to a stop, delicately balanced halfway over an abyss...
NOW OUT!!!
THE BOUNCING BRIDE
A mafia bride goes full rom com, Sandra Bullock style.
THE MAMMOTH PROJECT by Craig Strete and Terry Izumi
Soon to be a film one hopes.
NOBODY RIDES FOREVER
Billy the Kid rides again in a shameless retelling of the legend or maybe not.
PAINT YOUR FACE ON A DROWNING IN THE RIVER
Coming soon
Strete Food
Plays for the mind.
WRITINGS FOR CHILDREN
The Bleeding Man and Other Science Fiction Stories, intro by Virginia Hamilton, Greenwillow 1977.
Paint Your Face on a Drowning in the River, Greenwillow 1978.
Uncle Coyote and the Buffalo Pizza, In de Knipscheer (Holland), 1978.
When Grandfather Journeys into Winter Greenwillow, 1979.
Grootvaders Reisdoel, In de Knipscheer, 1980.
Met de Pijn die het Liefheeft en Haat, In de Knipscheer, 1983.
Big Thunder Magic Craig Brown, Greenwillow, 1990.
The World in Grandfather's Hands, Houghton Mifflin, 1995.
How the Indians Bought the Farm with Michelle Netten, Greenwillow, 1996.
They Thought They Saw Him Greenwillow, 1996.
Little Coyote Runs Away Putnam, 1997.
Lost Boy and the Monster, Putnam, 1999.
The Rattlesnake Who Went to School, Putnam, 2004.
PLAYS
Paint Your Face on a Drowning in the River, produced in Los Angeles, 1984.
Author of plays Dark Walkers, Love Affair, Knowing Who's Dead, In the Belly of the Death Mother and Horse of a Different Technicolor.
MORE ADULT FICTION
If All Else Fails, We Can Whip the Horse's Eye and Make Him Cry and Sleep In de Knipscheer, 1976, Doubleday 1980.
In Geronimo's Coffin, In de Knipscheer, 1978.
Spiegel Je Gezicht, In de Knipscheer, 1979.
Dark Journey (With Jim Morrison, In de Knipscheer, 1979.
Two Spies in the House of Love In de Knipscheer, 1981.
Dreams that Burn in the Night, Doubleday, 1982.
Burn Down the Night Warner Books. 1982.
To Make Death Love Us, Doubleday, 1985.
Death in the Spirit House , Doubleday, 1986.
Death Chants Doubleday, 1986.
Also author of the radio plays Saturday Night at the White Woman Watching Hole and The Bleeding Man for ZBS Productions and NPR Radio.
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