The Ghost Story Society

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Much of Joseph Bruchac's writing draws on the land of the Adirondack mountain foothills around Greenfield Center, New York, where he lives with his wife Carol in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. His influences are his Abenaki ancestry, although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood. He, his younger sister Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to work extensively in projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture, language, and traditional Native skills, including performing traditonal and contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers.

As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joe Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the U.S., and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He has been storyteller-in-residence for Native American organisations and schools throughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Onondaga Nation School. He discusses native culture and his books and does storytelling programmes at dozens of elementary and secondary schools each year as a visiting author.