Alice Azure

Alice Azure (born July 30, 1940 in North Adams, Massachusetts) is a poet and writer who is of Mi'kmaq descent. She is a member of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and the St. Louis Poetry Center.

Azure's father, Joseph Alfred Hatfield, was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, but grew up in northern Maine and New Hampshire. He was of French, Dutch, and Mi'kmaq descent. Azure's mother, Catherine Pedersen, was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, but spent her formative years in Mandal, Norway from about 1924 to 1934.At the age of eleven, family strife sent Azure and her siblings to live in the Cromwell Children's Home in Connecticut. Azure lived there from 1951 to 1959. She attended the University of Iowa, earning an M.A. degree in urban and regional planning.

Azure has been married twice. She married Tom Liljegren in 1960, and they had three children, Kathryn, Michael, and Patti. After twenty years of marriage, they divorced. Her second husband, Alec Azure, died after only two and a half years of marriage. Through her grief, Azure devoted more of her time to writing. Before she began writing, Azure worked for the United Way, starting as a volunteer in 1975, then as a professional in 1979. Except for a four-year period from mid-1990 to 1994, she remained a community planner in various local United Ways until her retirement January 2006.

She currently lives in Maryville, Illinois.

Azure was, for a long time, unclear about her familial roots, and did not know to which tribe she descended from. After searching for 35 years, she wrote a memoir, Along Came A Spider, about her life and the struggles she went through to discover her ancestry. After years of research, Azure discovered many of her old ancestors doing genealogical research and a visit to Nova Scotia . Azure is a member of Association des Acadiens Metis-Sourquois (salt water people), a controversial social group located in Saulnierville, Digby County, Nova Scotia.

Azure's work has been featured in many journals and magazines, including

• "Facing Down the Black Robes: An Interview with Charlene Eastman."Yellow Medicine Review, Ed. Chip Livingston. Fall 2012.
• "August Offerings" in The Florida Review, Volume 35, Number 1. Summer 2010
• "From Wasouk to Shoah and Back: A Mi’kmaq Honor Song" in Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust
• "Green Bay Blues" in Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review
• "Horicon II" in The Cream City Review
• "The Clown's Dance" in Native Chicago
• "Someday I Will Dance," "Glooscap's Messenger," "Katahdin Pilgrimage," and "Speelya Visions" in Micmac Maliseet Nations News
• "Bitterness Bundle" in Word Trails: Wordcraft Circle Quarterly Journal
• "Coyote Medicine Man," "Abnaki Winter,""Speelya Visions," "Glooscap's Messenger," "Someday I Will Dance," "Katahdin Pilgrimage," "To Michael," "Cumulative Pasts," "To Joanie, My Sister," "Animus Fantasy," "Leaving Maine," and "Elegy For My Cowboy" in Skins: Drumbeats from City
• "Isolation" in Pegasus 1960: The North Park Literature and Arts Review

• Along Came A Spider. Mayville, IL: Bowman Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1458372062
• In Mi'kmaq Country: selected poems & stories. Chicago, IL: Albatross Press, 2007.
• Games of Transformation. Chicago, IL: Albatross Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0966337136.Winner of the 2012 Poetry award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.
• Hunger Feast. Chicago, IL: Albatross Press, 2017. ISBN 0966337174