The Last Human Bear with author Greg Sarris and Kim Shuck

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Join author Greg Sarris for an epic story of curses, love, hard-won independence, and healing—the first novel in 28 years by a widely acclaimed Native writer. He'll be in conversation with Kim Shuck, former San Francisco Poet Laureate and member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. This event is co-sponsored by HeyDay Publishers and California Institute for Community, Art & Nature.

“Lush and gripping.” —Rebecca Solnit

Mary Hatcher lives with a curse—or is it a power that could make her life whole? A Native Pomo woman who comes of age in 1930s California, Mary keeps trying to make sense of her enigmatic family. Strange rumors spread about her. Her stepmother may have taught her how to become a Human Bear, a shapeshifter who can menace and poison enemies. Two men may love her—or love who they think she is. A mystery even to herself, Mary learns to pass between Native and white societies, tenaciously carving her own path as an independent woman. But as she explores love and desire, f amily inherited and chosen, and the secrets of the natural world, one question gnaws at her: Is she fated to do harm? Wry and richly lyrical, The Last Human Bear follows Mary from the Great Depression to the twenty-first century, when she commits a haunting final act.

Inspired by the Native women elders who shaped Greg Sarris in his youth, it is the triumphant and revelatory return of an eminent novelist.

About the Author

Greg Sarris is an enrolled member of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and is currently serving his seventeenth consecutive elected term as chairman of the tribe. He is the author of several books, including the novel Grand Avenue, which he adapted for an HBO miniseries and co-executive produced with Robert Redford; the novel Watermelon Nights; Weaving the Dream, a biography of Mabel McKay; Becoming Story, a memoir; and the story collections How a Mountain Was Made and The Forgetters. Formerly a full professor of English at UCLA, Sarris serves on the University of California Board of Regents and the Sundance Institute Board, and he holds the Distinguished Emeritus Graton Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Sonoma State University. He lives in Sonoma County, California. (Photo by Beowulf Sheehan)

About the Moderator

Kim Shuck was born in San Francisco and is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She received a BA in art and an MFA in textiles from San Francisco State University.

Shuck is the author of the poetry collections November Dance Shirt (Collapse Press, 2026); Pick a Garnet to Sleep In (Scapegoat Press, 2024), Deer/A-wi with Denise Low (Mammoth Publishing, 2024); What Unseen Thing Blows Wishes Across my Surface (hand bound art and poetry collaboration with LisaRuth Elliott, 2021); Exile Heart (That Painted Horse Press, 2021); Whose Water (Foothills Publishing 2020); Deer Trails (City Lights Books, 2019); Murdered Missing (FootHills Publishing 2019); Clouds Running In (Taurean Horn Press, 2014); Sidewalk Ndn (FootHills Publishing, 2014); Rabbit Stories (Poetic Matrix Press, 2013); and Smuggling Cherokee (Greenfield Review Press, 2005). She has also edited a similar number of anthologies.

In 2019, Shuck was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She served as the seventh poet laureate of San Francisco from 2017 to 2021.

Members: $5, Non-Members: $15