Books

Thunderous is a graphic novel written by M.L. Smoker and Natalie Peeterse. It is illustrated by Dale Ray Deforest. It is intended for readers from 8-12 years old.

‘If Aiyana hears one more traditional Lakota story, she’ll scream! More interested in her social media presence than her Native American heritage, Aiyana is shocked when she suddenly finds herself in the magical Spirit World–with no cell coverage!

Pursued by the trickster Raven, Aiyana struggles to get back home and is helped by friends and allies she meets along the way. Her dangerous journey through another world tests her fortitude and challenges her to embrace her Lakota roots. But will it be enough to defeat the powerful Raven?’

Publication Date: April 2022.



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Dreadful : Luminosity, Letters was published by Educe Press in April of 2017.

Dreadful : Luminosity is a sequence of poems about what it means to live in this world with all of its shine and dread. The poet addresses her daughter, drawing a lyric map to the highways, chapels and alleyways where she might find the answers to the questions she will have as she grows into a woman.

“Sorrow, aches, suffering – and yet, the tiny, brilliant wonders of a life amid this sometimes unfathomable world – in Peeterse’s vibrating collection this is motherhood, normalcy and also anguish.  We live out our lives like this, among the ordinary.  We travel and eat and clean house and sleep.  Yet nothing is ordinary and the shadows of humanity outside our windows cannot be misinterpreted or avoided.  Here Peeterse speaks to our desire to guard our most precious of gifts, when all we can do is show a way toward another desert or painted green door, despite having ‘no map and the map is everywhere.’  I admire this collection greatly for its dangerous yet devoted attention to our brightest lights and our greatest downfalls.” –ML Smoker



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Black Birds : Blue Horse, An Elegy is available through Gold Line Press at the University of Southern California. It won the Montana Artist Innovation Award in 2013.

“Natalie Peeterse’s Black Birds : Blue Horse is remarkable for its urgency and power. This precisely envisioned elegiac sequence is both intimate and public, reckoning its speaker’s passage through both the urban landscape of Washington, D. C. and the distant wartime nightmare of Afghanistan. We live in an age that is corrosive in its details, and this superb chapbook reminds us of the raw weather we all now live within — and of the ways the world, at times, can simply collapse upon us.” –David St. John, judge of the 2011 Poetry Chapbook Competition



Madrugada [Poems], University of Montana, 2002.