Book signing and conversation with author Diane Wilson
The South Dakota One Book tour brings the author of The Seed Keeper to Lead
The Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) welcomes Diane Wilson, author of The Seed Keeper, to an author conversation and book signing as part of the South Dakota One Book tour. The event takes place Wednesday, Sept. 20, at 6 p.m. at the Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center in Lead, South Dakota. Light refreshments will be served. Readers may purchase The Seed Keeper in advance at the Visitor Center or Mitzi’s Books in Rapid City.
A writer, speaker, educator, and author, Wilson has written four award-winning books, and published many essays in numerous publications. The Seed Keeper, her most recent novel, centers around Rosalie Iron Wing, who draws strength from the knowledge that she is descended from women with souls of iron, women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss. The book received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction.
Other books by Wilson include her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota (2006 Minnesota Book Award); Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado); Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector (Honor selection for the 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award); and the 2022 picture book Where We Come From (co-author).
Her most recent essays–which explore seed advocacy, food sovereignty, social justice, and cultural recovery–have been featured in acclaimed anthologies: Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World; and A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota.
Wilson is the former Executive Director for the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to support food sovereignty, and Dream of Wild Health, a Native-led farm. Wilson is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation. She lives near the St. Croix River in Minnesota, where she cares for an Indigenous seed garden, native perennials for pollinators, and a Tamarack bog.
Funded by a grant from the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the One Book Tour 2023 introduces communities throughout South Dakota to Wilson’s multi-generational story.