Bad Banana

Brendan Basham is a Diné author, teacher and artist who lives in New Mexico, near the Navajo and Zuni Reservations. His debut novel, “ Swim Home to the Vanished ,” tells the story of a small-town Diné line cook and uses magical realism to explore themes of grief and redemption.   What words of advice do you have for aspiring writers or aspiring cooks? What would you say to those folks? BB: Number one for any young Native person: It doesn't matter what you want to do with your life, your story matters. Your story counts and it needs to be heard. Number two: If you're a young artist writer, you need to read everything you can get your hands on. All genres, all time eras. And you’ve got to travel a lot, and you’ve got to learn new languages and challenge any kind of preconceived notions of the world that you've had. Also: Don't forget where you come from. I want to see craft, I want people to make beautiful things. I don't want to see young Native writers wr...

IT IS OUR BIRTHDAY TODAY - WE STARTED PUBLISHING ON 11-11-11. Happy 14th Birthday to us!  and we are happy to be BAD BANANA, too! 

  Inuk writer Jamesie Fournier says scary monsters and horror stories often have important lessons and serve as cautionary tales for young people. (Photo courtesy of Jamesie Fourner) Arts and Culture    Oct 31, 2025  New anthology brings horror to the tundra Collection provides 12 spooky tales about zombies, monsters and other mythical creatures By Jorge Antunes A new anthology of Arctic horror stories includes modern interpretations of Inuit myths, zombies on the tundra and cannibal children. “When you encounter scary stories, in most cultures, they have that high interest value where they could be a little morbid or graphic or very da...

 From the fabulous Jenny Lawson   You are being scammed. Don’t fall for it. October 24, 2025 in Random Crap This isn’t a real post. It’s me venting a little and also maybe letting you in on something that might cost you a lot of money if you aren’t aware of it, especially if you are an author. Scammers have been taking advantage of authors forever. They know that your books are your babies and you desperately want to find the readers who will love them and that can make you emotionally invested in ways that make you vulnerable to people taking advantage of you. Here are a few recent and not so recent scams to be aware of, including one I got close to falling for myself: THE PAID PODCAST SCAM: This one consists of someone wanting you to be on a well-known podcast (or facebook live, etc) where you’ll be getting $3000 just for participating. This is the first red flag. You don’t get paid for being a one-time guest on a p...

Writing is cathartic, says poet, who voices his trauma in new collection Tuesday, October 7th, 2025   Joseph Dandurand. Photo by Peter Arkell   By Shari Narine Windspeaker.com Books Feature Writer Joseph Dandurand’s latest collection of poetry, I Would Like to Say Thank You, is a raw look into a life that has been both hard and rewarding. The Kwantlen First Nation poet calls writing poetry cathartic even if he’s sharing something with the reader that he has kept to himself for years. “I think probably the emotion that I'm in in that moment when I'm creating something might allow me to put my guard down and allow trauma to be voiced in a way that is, unfortunately, soothing and traumatic at the same time,” said Dandurand. His process is such that he allows whatever is in his head to flow on to the paper...

Announcing a new book certification scheme that enables publishers to prove their books are written by humans SamJordison Aug 06, 2025    First, the bad news: We now live in a world where it is necessary to prove that books have been written by humans. We have reached a point where so much generative AI-slop is being foisted on the public that readers are becoming suspicious of what they might be buying. Not least because quite a bit of that slop has been designed to rip-off the genuine article. But now for the better news. There is a solution: A new book certification scheme called Books By People is launching in the UK. Based on careful vetting and testing procedures, it enables publishers to reassure readers that the books they are selling are real. If you want to know a book is genuine, you will soon be able to look for this kite-mark: Before proceeding, I should admit to an interest here. I’m on the advisory board of Books By People 1 Also, I have an axe to grin...

Native Influencer: Author Vanessa Lillie East Sider Vanessa Lillie prepares for the release of her fourth solo thriller, The Bone Thief. Photo by Brittanny Taylor, courtesy of Vanessa Lillie August 1, 2025 Meet Vanessa Lillie on August 18 at Wakefield Books where she’s participating in a thriller panel with fellow authors Jessa Maxwell and Kristin Offiler. For more information and to register, visit WakefieldBooks.com.  By Hugh Minor Th...

FRESH AIR INTERVIEW👆  Finding Your Ancestors in the Archives PHOTO: Author Joseph Lee. (Photo/Aslan Chalom) By  Shaun Griswold |  July 19, 2025   Yahoo News Summer memories of running with cousins in Zuni mud — all the weekends I spent at my Auntie Paula’s home on the Zuni Pueblo — return as I read Joseph Lee’s book  Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity .  A mixture of memoir, reportage and commentary, it documents Lee’s family history, describing how land and ancestry forged strong links to his Aquinnah Wampanoag home on Martha’s Vineyard. Lee’s stories echoed my own rez dirt memories, layers of loving Indigenous relationships with foundations deeper than any historical record. [Editor's Note: This column  originally appeared  in "High Country News. Used with permission. All rights reserved.] Lee spoke with  High Country...

I am rereading Pointing with Lips!  If you have not read it, grab a copy TODAY!... Trace Here is a review: Transmotion Vol 1, No 1 (2015) Lone Hill, Dana. Pointing with Lips: A Week in the Life of a Rez Chick . Greenfield: Blue Hand Books, 2014. ISBN: 978-1-4959-4529-8. 326 pp. https://www.createspace.com/4670234?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026 Humor. There is much one can say about this important first novel by Dana Lone Hill, Pointing with Lips: A Week in the Life of a Rez Chick , but humor is at the forefront of her work.  On nearly every page there is something to make the reader smile, chuckle, or tear up with laughter.  To be sure there are serious issues dealt with in the novel, but humor sustains the reader through the work, as humor sustained the author growing up on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the setting for Pointing with Lips .  In Custer Died for Your Sins , Vine Deloria , Jr. argues, "One of the best ways to understand a people is to know w...

 COMING THIS FALL 2025  Carson Faust Growing up in Wisconsin, Carson Faust didn’t know much about the Native American side of his family from South Carolina until his grandmother showed him a box of papers that laid out the family’s genealogy. The box, which also contained interviews with tribal members and non-Native townsfolk, became the origin for If the Dead Belong Here (Viking, Oct.), Faust’s haunting mystery about a missing Native American girl. “It was almost like an anthropological study,” says Faust, an enrolled member of the Edisto-Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina . He spent hours poring over the documents in his grandmother’s attic and began writing a story, interspersing sections that mirrored these archival documents, until he lost interest in the “idea of outsiders describing my culture in the form of affidavits or census records.” He explains that “it became important to me to center the voice of a commu...

Why The Windows Have To Be Open When Writing Poetry Writing as Craft Amanda Wells July 18, 2025 Aaron John Curtis | The PEN Ten The restorative and revelatory journey in Old School Indian, the debut novel by Aaron John Curtis , explores the impact that culture, community, and history have on an individual. Two decades after leaving the reservation where he was raised, Abe Jacobs, now a part-time poet in Miami whose marriage is about to collapse, is diagnosed with a rare disease that doctors believe will kill him. Returning to the Rez, where he grew up, Abe agrees to undergo traditional healing by his Great Uncle Budge despite his skepticism, and finds a new path forward with writing, healing, his family, and his relationship. (Zando – Hillman Grad Books, 2025) In conversation with Digital Safety & Free Expression Program Coordinator Amanda Wells for this week’s PEN Ten, Curtis explains the importance of oral histor...