Lowry Hill Gallery will host a book reading and signing with local author James Lenfestey on Friday June 12, 2026 from 6-8pm. Lenfestey, a resident of the Lowry Hill neighborhood in Minneapolis, and Calumet Editions are pleased to announce the publication of Coyote and the Thunderbird: New Tales for the Book of Coyote.
After teaching Native American Literature and the Literature of Comedy for a dozen years and serving on the StarTribune editorial board, Lenfestey is author of thirteen books of poems and essays, a memoir, editor of four anthologies and winner of the Kay Sexton Award for leadership in the Minnesota literary community.
"I DID NOT WRITE THESE STORIES!"
“I did not write these stories!” claims a bemused Lenfestey of his collection of trickster tales, Coyote and the Thunderbird: New Tales for the Book of Coyote. “After forty years, I finally figured out what happened! That character on the cover, Trickster Coyote dancing as Uncle Sam, and his companion images Coyote Woman and the Coyote rock stars ‘Rose and the Res Girls’, all by California Indigenous artist Harry Fonseca, jumped down from my downtown office wall after I went home for the evening and told these stories to my idle Macintosh!”
Forty years ago, more or less, while a fourth child had landed in the burgeoning Lenfestey family plus a responsible job on the Minneapolis StarTribune editorial board, these tales disappeared into the author's Drawer of Forgotten Projects.
The stories were not forgotten by Ian Graham Leask, publisher of Calumet Editions, who loved them and urged Lenfestey to publish. In fall 2025, Lenfestey finally excavated the manuscript from cobwebbed MSWord files and was ... astonished!. .. at the hilarity and amazements of these wild tales, like nothing he remembered. Coyote steals a mythic red '56 Thunderbird and whirlwinds around North and South America telling stories - scuffling with coyote pups in the Sierra Nevada, fishing with Trout Mother on the Continental Divide, singing rock 'n roll with Rose and the Res Girls, running for president, winning a Cleveland Indians ball game, washing dishes at the Buffalo Woman Cafe, scheming big business in the canyons of New York City, driving the Girl of his Dreams to Wall Street in Cusco, Peru, scuba diving to an exotic beach in the Virgin Islands, all under the view of a new stone head in the Black Hills and Coyote Woman wryly observing all. And those are just the outer stories! Every tale sports a dream inside, every dream another story!
Nextdoor to Lowry Hill Gallery, on June 12, Sebastian Joe’s will be serving “Chocolate Coyote”, a special ice cream flavor in honor of the book release. In addition to the Lowry Hill Gallery event, Lenfestey will tell tales from the book at 6pm Wednesday, June 10 at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, where the Harry Fonseca coyote cover image, "Shuffle off to Buffalo," is now in residence.
COYOTE AND THE THUNDERBIRD, New Tales for the Book of Coyote
By James P. Lenfestey
Preface by Lewis Hyde
Calumet Editions, June 10, 2026
Paperback, 215 pages
$18.99; Kindle $9.99
For more information, please contact Muriel Lang at info@lowryhillgallery.com or by phone at 612-315-4080.