From "Coyote Stories"
by Danica Novgorodoff
I started this piece as a documentary photo essay on a coyote hunting championship in Argonne, Wisconsin. At a frozen sports bar with whipped cream shots, a rifle raffle, and a string of 12 dead coyotes (out of the estimated 30,00050,000 that live in the state), I learned that, mostly, the coyotes get away. Later I met Lewis Hyde and read his book, Trickster Makes This World. That’s coyote, the trickster. He works for no one but himself, does what he’s told not to do, and will go so far as to rip out his own eyes for a better view of the world. I’d like my art to do something like that. These poems are retellings of Native American stories about that ravenous, two-faced, disobedient devil of a dog. The images are also translations of those stories, but into a different language.
Danica Novgorodoff is an artist, writer, graphic novelist, graphic designer and horse wrangler from Kentucky who currently lives in Brooklyn. She has published three graphic novels: A Late Freeze (2006), Slow Storm (2008), and Refresh, Refresh (included in Best American Comics 2011). Her fourth graphic novel, The Undertaking of Lily Chen, is forthcoming from First Second Books.
Originally appeared in the online supplement to the Beyond Category issue 43.2-44.1