Click this link to listen to Season 3 Episode 23 featuring Anishinaabe author Amber Blaeser-Wardzala.
On this episode of Native Circles, co-hosts Eva Bighorse and Farina King speak with Anishinaabe author Amber Blaeser-Wardzala from White Earth Nation about her debut novel, Another Name for Red. The story follows Middle Sister as she searches for answers about her older sister’s disappearance while navigating grief, family, and community.
Amber discusses writing for Native readers while also inviting a wider audience to better understand the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis. The conversation considers the power of names, relationships to land and language, healing through family and cultural connection, and challenging stereotypes about Indigenous people. Amber also shares how running, beadwork, and time outdoors help her care for herself while writing about difficult subjects and reflects on her hope that the novel inspires action toward justice.
Along with being a writer, Amber Blaeser-Wardzala is also a beader and Jingle Dress Dancer. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at Ohio State University. She received her MFA from Arizona State University and was the 2024-25 George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy. Her writing is published in the bestselling Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, The Iowa Review, Joyland, Passages North, CRAFT, and others. Amber is a 2022 Tin House Fellow and a 2021 Fellow for the inaugural Women’s National Book Association Authentic Voices Program. She has received support from Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, Storyknife Writers Retreat, the Virginia G. Piper Center, and Center for Imagination in the Borderlands. Her new novel Another Name for Red was published in October 2026, and her short story collection (Deer Women) is forthcoming from Pantheon Books.
Resources:
Amber Blaeser-Wardzala’s website
Order Another Name for Red now available from Penguin Random House
