Toni Jensen

Toni Jensen combines memoir, cultural criticism and close attention to place. Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land is a memoir in essays that considers gun violence, Indigenous identity and the ways danger is experienced across American landscapes. Ballantine issued Carry in 2020, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize named it a finalist in nonfiction. Jensen, who is Métis, wrote the story collection From the Hilltop as well. She has taught at Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and she received an NEA fellowship. Carry moves between personal experience and public history, allowing individual scenes to expose larger patterns without reducing the book to a single chronological narrative.