Claiming Breath (North American Indian Prose Award)

Like poets of legend, Diane Glancy has spent much of her life on the road. For years she supported her family by driving throughout Oklahoma and Arkansas teaching poetry in the schools. Claiming Breath is an account of one of those years, what Glancy calls "a winter count of sorts, a calendar, a diary of personal matters . . . and a final acceptance of the broken past. . . . It's a year that covers more than a year."