Howard Norman
| Howard Norman | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Howard A. Norman 1949 Toledo, Ohio, USA |
| Occupation | Writer; Educator |
| Education |
Western Michigan University; Indiana University |
| Subject | Folklore; Fiction |
| Notable works | The Bird Artist |
| Notable awards |
Lannan Literary Award; Harold Morton Landon Translation Award; Whiting Award |
| Spouse | Jane Shore |
| Children | Daughter, Emma |
Howard A. Norman (born 1949), is an American award-winning writer and educator. Most of his short stories and novels are set in Canada's Maritime Provinces. He has written several translations of Algonquin, Cree, and Inuit folklore. His books have been translated into 12 languages.
Norman was born in Toledo, Ohio. His parents were Russian-Polish-Jewish; they met in a Jewish orphanage. The family moved several times and Norman attended four different elementary schools, including in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His father was absent much of the time; his mother babysat other children. He has three brothers.
After dropping out of high school, Norman moved to Toronto. Working in Manitoba on a fire crew with Cree Indians, Norman became fascinated with their folkstories and culture. He spent the next sixteen years living and writing in Canada, including the Hudson Bay area and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. During this time, he received his high school equivalency diploma, and studied later at Western Michigan University Honors College where he received Bachelor of Arts degrees in zoology and English in 1972. In 1974, he earned a Master of Arts degree from the Folklore Institute of Indiana University linguistics and folklore; his Masters thesis was entitled, Fatal Incidents of Unrequited Love in Folktales Around the World. For the next three years, he participated in the Michigan Society of Fellows;The Cree personal name was published in 1977.
"I said this in a nonfiction book, and I’ll repeat it at the risk of quoting myself: when I wake up in Halifax or Nova Scotia, there is a shorter distance between my unconscious life and my conscious life than anywhere else, I feel more complete and more whole." (H.A. Norman, 2004)
Norman has been a prolific writer in a variety of styles. How Glooskap Outwits the Ice Giants, The owl-scatterer, and Between heaven and earth are written for juvenile audiences. His books on Canadian folklore include The wishing bone cycle (Cree), Who met the ice lynx (Cree), Who-Paddled-Backward-With-Trout (Cree), The girl who dreamed only geese (Inuit) Trickster and the fainting birds (Algonquin), and Northern tales (Eskimo). Northern Tales, translated into Italian and Japanese, was Norman's first book translated into foreign language.In Fond Remembrance of Me is not only an English translation of Noah and the Ark stories as told by a Manitoba Inuit elder, it is also a memoir of the friendship that Norman kindles with Helen Tanizaki, a writer who is translating these same stories into Japanese before her death.
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