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.”

Diane Glancy teaches creative writing and Native American literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her collections of poetry, Iron Woman, and of short fiction, Trigger Dance, have also won major prizes.

"This is a rich, satisfying book, full of wisdom."—Choice

"Glancy is a major voice in Native America today. Claiming Breath is a refreshingly honest depiction of contemporary life and an important step in American Indian literature. Non-Indian readers can learn much from Glancy’s text, which presents an Indian worldview complete in its holistic complexity and integrity."—American Indian Culture and Research Journal

"An important addition to the literature of white-Indian cultural interrelationships."—World Literature Today

1993 Oklahoma Book Award, sponsored by the Oklahoma Center for the Book, non-fiction category finalist