EDITORS

Patricia is an emerging author/editor/teacher and graduate of Evergreen State College and Goddard College. She has an MFA in creative writing. She received her education later in life. She enjoys the process of fusing fiction and non-fiction with poetry, art, and photography. Patricia is an adopted woman. She is also an adoptive parent. Standing on both sides of the fence continues to be a learning experience. She is of Cherokee-Shawnee, Irish, Welsh and German mix. Her family is multi-cultural. One of her daughter's is African American. Patricia's grandson is Turkish, Egyptian and Native American. Patricia is still in the process of reuniting with siblings, family members and places where her ancestors lived their lives. Patricia firmly believes that healing happens when we reconnect to ourselves, when we are truly heard and when we share our stories.

Trace’s memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects is a ground-breaking exposé on the systematic removal of American Indian children from their mothers, families and tribes for adoption to non-Indian families and she weaves in her own personal story.  Known for her exceptional print interviews with influential Native Americans such as Leonard Peltier and Floyd Red Crow Westerman, DeMeyer started research on adoptees in 2004.  Her discoveries and research culminated in a fact-filled book she published in 2010, then a second revised edition in 2012.  Her adoptee journey takes her around the country, finally meeting her birthfather in 1994 and learning about her Cherokee-Shawnee-Euro ancestry. She is also French Canadian with ancestry from Ottawa and Quebec.
Trace is former editor of tribal newspapers the Pequot Times in Mashantucket, Conn. (1999-2004) and Ojibwe Akiing in Wisconsin (1996-1999).  Her chapter HONOR RESTORED on Sac and Fox Olympian Jim Thorpe won critical praise in the 2001 book Olympics at the Millennium (published by Rutgers Press).  She read from her highly-anticipated memoir at the Wisconsin Book Festival in October 2008.  In 2009, she started her blog about American Indian Adoptees: www.splitfeathers.blogspot.com.  Her memoir was chosen as Native America Calling’s Book of the Month in March 2010.

In 2014, Patricia and Trace co-edited and published TWO WORLDS: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects, using the Blue Hand Books as its publisher. This ground-breaking collection of adoptee narratives and its contribution to American Indian and First Nations history is a major accomplishment and the editors were invited to present on a panel at Brock University in Ontario in 2014.

Trace has contributed to new adoption-themed books Adoptionland, Adoption Reunion in the Age of Social Media, and the Lost Daughters anthology.

She operates Blue Hand Books as a collective with other Native American writers/authors.
Trace Lara Hentz (formerly DeMeyer) lives at the foot of the Berkshire Mountains on Pocumtuck Land in western Massachusetts with her husband Herb.