Indigenous Mystery Author Event: Another Name for Red

Join us at Subtext Bookstore on Sunday, October 25th from 5 PM - 6 PM to hear from debut author, Amber Blaeser-Wardzala, discuss her title Another Name for Red. Amber will be in conversation with Carson Faust, author of If The Dead Belong Here.

After a young Anishinaabe woman vanishes, her sister tries to pick up the pieces of her broken family, even as her investigations put her at risk of suffering a similar fate. With local authorities proving useless, Middle Sister decides to start an investigation of her own, beginning with the mysterious “Eric”—a white man from a neighboring town who Older Sister claimed to love, and who she swore loved her. Attempting to hunt down the correct white Eric in the haystack of Minnesota forces Middle Sister to seek help from the community from which she’s grown alienated, starting with her coworker, Casanova; a stray rez dog; and Nookomis, her grandmother who’s foreseen her own death. In the end, she must choose: either let the guilt consume her or forgive herself and fight.

Amber Blaeser-Wardzala is an Anishinaabe writer, beadwork artist, and jingle dress dancer. She is a first-degree descendant of White Earth Nation in Minnesota and grew up in southeastern Wisconsin. She received her MFA from Arizona State University and was the 2024-25 George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy. Her writing has appeared in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, The Iowa Review, Joyland, Passages North, CRAFT, and others.

Carson Faust is two-spirit and an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina. He is the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. His fiction has appeared in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. He lives in Minnesota.

This event is free.