Stan Rushworth was born in 1944 and raised on the banks of the Stanislaus River in the east San Joaquin valley in California by his grandfather, who was of Cherokee descent. He served as an Army volunteer in the Far East during the Vietnam War and earned a Master of Arts degree in Language Arts and Creative Writing at San Francisco State University after returning home. He taught Native American Literature at Cabrillo College for 29 years, including similar work at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a lecturer, and worked for 18 years at Cabrillo’s Watsonville Center teaching basic skills and critical thinking surrounding Indigenous peoples’ issues, including 6 years as Director/Instructor of the Puente Program, a writing-centered project focused in the Chicano community. His books are Sam Woods: American Healing (1992); Going to Water: The Journal of Beginning Rain (2014); and Diaspora’s Children (2020). Stan works as an activist and advocate for Indigenous people as a teacher, writer and speaker. He is an enrolled citizen of the Chiricahua Apache Nation, and is also a member the Santa Cruz Indian Council, where he is an Advising Cultural Elder. He is the Elder in Residence at the University of California, Santa Cruz for 2019/20, with the American Indian Resource Center. Stan’s latest book, published in April 2022 is an anthology he co-edited with Dahr Jamail is We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth.