Poetry. Native American Studies. INDIAN TRAINS is about small town Indians, about community and family, about thieves, prostitutes, train stealers, drug dealers, loners, jerks, dreaming alcoholics; and the ones who did everything but all that. It is about an entirely new tribe: urban mixed-bloods of multiple tribes who are going to powwows, Indian bars, and Urban Native organizations rather than only reservations for cultural fulfillment. They are the majority of the Indian population--the truly unsung peoples of America. Erika T. Wurth is mixed blood (Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee). She lives in Albuquerque and teaches at Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M. "This is a funny, sad and powerful book. Each poem is lovely and the cumulative effect is devastating"--Sherman Alexie. "The country between poetry and stories is where this story-singer comes from. Tales of polished obsidian. Full of night, fascinating and frightful. Glistening and brilliant. Small enough to hold in the hand. Sharp enough to tear open the heart. I was left breathless"--Sandra Cisneros.

Erika T. Wurth is mixed blood (Apache, Chickasaw, Cherokee) and was born in Los Angeles. She grew up in Colorado between Idaho Springs and Evergreen, although she has lived different places off and on. Her work, both poetry and fiction, has appeared in Raven Chronicles, Fiction, Cedar Hill Review, AMCRJ, and SAIL. She teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. Currently, she is living in Albuquerque as a visiting writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Indian Trains is her first book.