Readers Retreat

Laura M. Furlan is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches courses in Native American literature, American Studies, and creative nonfiction. She earned a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She is the author of Indigenous Cities: Urban Indian Fiction and the Histories of Relocation (2017, Nebraska), a study of contemporary Indigenous novels that are set in urban spaces. In 2020, she co-edited a special issue of the Massachusetts Review of new Native writing, and in 2021 she co-edited a special issue of Studies in American Indian Literatures focused on Deborah Miranda’s memoir Bad Indians in which her award-winning essay, “The Archives of Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians” appears.

She is working on a book project that studies the uses of the archive in contemporary Native writing and art. Her creative work has appeared in Sentence, Sovereign Erotics (2011, Arizona), Touchstone, and ZYZZYVA. She has slowly been writing a memoir that chronicles her experience as an adoptee of Native descent. She is the current president of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures (ASAIL). 

Maria Girouard, Penobscot from Penobscot Nation, is a Tribal Historian with an expertise in the Maine Indian Land Claims. She earned her Master’s degree in History from the University of Maine and authored the thesis entitled, The Original Meaning and Intent of the Maine Indian Land Clams: Penobscot Perspectives. Maria is a longstanding community organizer, environmental steward, and educator who has spoken extensively on topics such as Penobscots’ cultural connections to the Penobscot River, tribal-state relations, the Maine Indian Land Claims, food sovereignty and justice, and the sacred mountain of Katahdin.   

Maria is a co-founder of Sunlight Media Collective and co-wrote the documentary The Penobscot: Ancestral River, Contested Territory, a film that traverses the landscape of tribal-state relations in Maine and tells a story of an enduring struggle for justice and cultural survival. 

Maria was the first Executive Director for Wabanaki REACH, a statewide, native-led non-profit that ushered in the Maine Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission and works toward truth, healing, and change in the Dawnland. In this capacity she co-hosted the talk radio program Dawnland Signals on WERU/FM. She currently serves the Penobscot Tribe as an elected member of the Penobscot Tribal Council and as the Agricultural Program Manager stewarding the newly established Penobscot Nation Tribal Farm.