Kent Nerburn


Kent Michael Nerburn is an American author. He has published 16 books of creative non-fiction and essays, focusing on Native American and American culture and general spirituality. He won a Minnesota Book Award in 1995 for Neither Wolf Nor Dog and again in 2010 for The Wolf At Twilight. The Girl who Sang to the Buffalo, is the final book in this trilogy.
Nerburn describes his work as a search for “an authentic American spirituality.” He has been described as having a “poetry of thought”, as someone who reveals the “profound impact of nature and ‘place’ on the human spirit”, and as someone who displays “integrity and honesty in presenting the experience of native elders today.” He has been commended as a non-native author who respectfully attempts to bridge the gap between Native and non-Native cultures.

Early years

Nerburn was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Lloyd Nerburn and Virginia. Lloyd Nerburn worked for the American Red Cross as director of disaster relief for the Midwest region.
He attended the University of Minnesota and graduated summa cum laude in 1968 with a degree in American Studies. He attended graduate school at Stanford University from 1969-1970 and later Graduate Theological Union and the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated with a Ph.D. with distinction in religion and art in 1980.

Work

Nerburn initially worked as a sculptor, focusing on over life size works carved from single tree trunks in order to “get the spirit of the tree” in the images he created. His sculpture "Joseph the Worker" completed while he was living in the Westminster Benedictine Abbey in Mission, British Columbia His sculpture "Mother and Child" was donated to the Hiroshima Peace Museum in Hiroshima, Japan. In 1990, he was commissioned by the Hennepin County Humane Society to create a bronze figure of St. Francis and the animals. That sculpture was installed in the society's headquarters in Golden Valley, Minnesota.
Between 1988 and 1990, Nerburn founded and directed "Project Preserve" an oral history project on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota. He and students from Red Lake high school published two books of oral history: To Walk the Red Road and We Choose To Remember. This experience caused him to redirect his artistic focus from sculpture to writing.
Nerburn’s book Neither Wolf Nor Dog was chosen as the Community Reads book for the “Eden Prairie Reads” campaign in 2004, a program that encouraged everyone in this Minneapolis suburb to read the book and discuss it in various venues. Neither Wolf nor Dog was also chosen as the common reads book for Winona State University freshmen in 2007, where it engendered controversy for its combining of traditional storytelling and oral history techniques under the designation of non-fiction. It has since become a staple of Common Reads programs, including being chosen as the 2019 One Book South Dakota selection by the to be read and discussed in communities throughout the state to foster discussions about race and cultural understanding. His subsequent work, The Wolf at Twilight, was used as the common reads book for incoming freshmen at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. His work, Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce, was featured on CSPAN and the History Channel in 2005. Nerburn was featured on the PBS program, , in 2014,” . A one-hour program on Nerburn and his work, was created by Northern Minnesota Public Television in 2013.
Nerburn’s friendship with the singer Robert Plant resulted in Neither Wolf nor Dog being picked up for European publication by prestigious UK publisher, . He and Plant, along with novelist and critic Andrew O’Hagan spoke together about the book at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales in 2017. Neither Wolf nor Dog was also adapted into a highly successful , starring 97 year old Lakota elder, Dave Bald Eagle, in the last performance of his career.
Nerburn’s works on general spirituality have included Simple Truths, Small Graces, and Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, which included a story about Nerburn’s time driving a cab in Minneapolis in the late 80s. It received over 4 million internet hits and was purchased by New Line Cinema for adaptation into a motion picture. His work, Letters to My Son (re-released in 2013, was quoted by British Prime Minister David Cameron during his father’s day address to the nation in 2011.
Nerburn has recently published Dancing with the Gods: Reflections on Life and Art, about the inner life of the artist, with Canongate Books. Daniel Pink called it “a powerful and deeply moving meditation on what it means to live the life of the artist.” He has also released , a work that he calls his “quiet, poetic literary child” that uses storytelling and metaphor to address the link between the land, Native American understanding, and the western Judeo Christian spiritual tradition. Literary Journalism Studies has said that it “bridges Native and non-Native... cultures in eloquent prose that invites comparison to Anne Lamott and Annie Dillard” and makes his work “a compelling addition to the canon of literary nonfiction.”

Personal life

Nerburn married Louise Mengelkoch in 1989. Mengelkoch is a retired journalism professor, who taught at Bemidji State University for 24 years. They have one son, and they helped raise Mengelkoch's other three children. They now live outside of Portland, Oregon after 25 years in the woods and lake country of northern Minnesota.

Reviews

“What the Land Knows: Kent Nerburn’s Books Bridge the Spirits of Two Peoples.”

Other articles

Kaszuba, Mike., "Northsider seeks a way to keep the presses rolling," Minneapolis Star and Tribune, Oct. 1, 1995, 3B.