WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE: claudeclaytonsmith.wordpress.com
You can contact me at: smithclaudeclayton@gmail.com
I am available for one-hour Zoom discussions with groups or classes that read my books.
PUBLISHED in October, 2026, a revised and updated edition of RED MEN IN RED SQUARE: CHIEF BIG EAGLE AND THE RUSSIAN INDIANISTS, from Shanti Arts. The new edition was timed to ensure that Native voices were heard during “America 250,” the 250th birthday of the U.S.A. Thanks to all who attended the official book launch at the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Reservation! Here is the publisher’s link:
https://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/stu/SMITH_RED.html
And here is a review (2nd book listed):
RED MEN IN RED SQUARE: CHIEF BIG EAGLE AND THE RUSSIAN INDIANISTS is currently being translated into Russian by Olga Sharpe, assistant professor of psychology, at the University of Hartford, who came of age with the Indianists before emigrating.
ALSO AVAILABLE: the 2nd edition of QUARTER-ACRE OF HEARTACHE, marking the 50th anniversary of the start of what the late Chief Big Eagle of Connecticut’s Paugussett Indians called “the war for the quarter-acre,” one of the oldest (1659) and smallest Indian reservations in the United States. The first edition was translated into Russian by Alexander Vashchenko. The second was launched at the Golden Hill Paugussett Reservation in Trumbull, CT, in July of 2025. See the book here:
THANKS TO ALL who attended the Wisconsin debut of the 3rd edition of my novel The Stratford Devil (2023) at Madison’s Barnes & Noble, and at my home town library in Stratford, Connecticut. The novel was reissued to celebrate the “exoneration” of all those accused of witchcraft in colonial Connecticut. You can find it here:
https://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/stu/SMITH_STRATFORD.html
See this link for the latest review:
https://www.midwestbookreview.com/wbw/dec_23.htm#HistoricalFiction
You can hear me on Adam Cleri’s Bridgeport (CT) Library podcast discussing how my historical novel THE STRATFORD DEVIl led to my nonfiction books QUARTER-ACRE OF HEARTACHE and RED MEN IN RED SQUARE:
IN MEMORIAM: N. SCOTT MOMADAY, “The Father of Native American Literature,” 1934-2024.
Momaday’s poems and artwork appeared in MEDITATIONS AFTER THE BEAR FEAST: The Poetic Dialogues of N. Scott Momaday & Yuri Vaella, which I served as co-editor/ translator with the late Alexander Vashchenko of Moscow State University. See this link:
http://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/stu/SMITH_MEDITATIONS.html
Momaday provided the Foreword to The Way of Kinship (University of Minnesota, 2010), the world’s first anthology of Native Siberian literature in English, also translated and edited by Vashchenko and me:
https://www.upress.umn.edu/search-grid/?keyword=The+Way+of+Kinship
A more recent work you might enjoy is Mists on the River: Folktales from Siberia (2020), by Yeremei Aipin, which I edited and translated with his daughter Marina:
