Christine Stark is a Native (Anishinaabe & Cherokee) award-winning writer, researcher, visual artist, and national and international speaker. Her credentials include an MFA and MSW, and in-particular, life experience.

Her first novel, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation, was a Lambda Literary Finalist. Her essays, poems, academic writing, and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications including: The Palgrave International Handbook on Trafficking, University of Pennsylvania Law Review; Dignity Journal; The WIP; Florida Review; The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prize-Winning Essays; When We Became Weavers: Queer Female Poets on the Midwest ExperienceHawk and Handsaw: The Journal of Creative Sustainability; and many others.

Stark is also a co-editor of Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography; and a co-author of the ground-breaking research “Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota.” Research for the piece was conducted with Native women survivors of prostitution and trafficking on the ships in Duluth, Minnesota and is included in her article “Strategies to Restore Justice for Sex Trafficked Native Women.” She is co-author and co-researcher of “Evidence of Survivor, Agency, and Researcher Collaboration: An Example of an Emerging Model of Survivor Wellbeing.” Stark has also written a memoir entitled Fish.

Her writing has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. In 2012 she was named a “Changemaker” by the Women’s Press and was a Loft Series Mentor Finalist. In 2019 Stark received the International Social Justice Citizen Award from the International Leadership Institute. She has appeared on numerous radio talk shows including NPR, MPR, PBS, Justice Talking, and Robin Morgan’s Radio Show. Stark enjoys public speaking and such engagements include law schools, conferences, rallies, and at the United Nations. She has taught writing and humanity courses at universities and community colleges for eighteen years and worked as a Two-Spirit program director at Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center. Currently, she facilitates art and writing groups at Breaking Free in St. Paul, consults with a variety of local and national organizations, and teaches writing and literature at Anoka Ramsey Community College. She is also a member of the Minnesota Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Taskforce.

To sum it up, Stark has had a prolific writing career with her second novel, Carnival Lights, scheduled for publication in February 2021. For more information, please visit www.christinestark.com.