Mona Susan Power

Mona Susan Power (born 1961) is an American author from Chicago, Illinois. Her debut novel, The Grass Dancer (1994), received the 1995 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Best First Fiction.

Early life and education
Power was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Her mother, Susan Kelly Power (Gathering of Stormclouds Woman, her Dakota name), is also an enrolled member. Her great-grandmother was Nellie Two Bear Gates. She is a descendant of Sioux Chief Mato Nupa (Two Bears). Her father, Carleton Gilmore Power, is of New England Euro-American descent and worked as a salesman in publishing. One of his great-great-grandfathers was governor of New Hampshire. She heard stories that inspired her imagination from both sides. Power attended local schools, then earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Change to writing
After a short career in law, Power decided to become a writer. She worked as a technical writer and editor, reserving her creative writing for off hours. In 1992 she entered the MFA program at the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Her 1994 debut novel, The Grass Dancer, has a complex plot about four generations of Native Americans, with action stretching from 1864 to 1986. The work received the 1995 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Best First Fiction.

Power has written several other books as well. Her short fiction has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, Voice Literary Supplement, Ploughshares, Story, and The Best American Short Stories 1993. She teaches at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Power's most recent novel, A Council of Dolls, was released in 2023. The novel is longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction.

Books

 * The Grass Dancer, Putnam, 1994. Translated in French in 1995 by Danièle and Pierre Bondil under the title "Danseur d'herbe".
 * Strong Heart Society, Penguin, 1998.
 * Roofwalker, Milkweed Editions, 2002.
 * Sacred Wilderness, Michigan State University Press, 2014.
 * A Council of Dolls, Mariner Books, 2023.

Short Stories

 * “Dead Owls” in Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology (September, 19th, 2023)