SE alumna Amanda Cobb-Greetham to hold signing event for Little Big Girl on December 3 at Semple Family Museum

November 14, 2024

Southeastern Oklahoma State University alumna Amanda Cobb-Greetham will hold a signing event for her new book Little Big Girl from 4-6 p.m. on Tuesday, December 3, at the Semple Family Museum of Native American Art on the Southeastern campus.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase and autographs at the event, as well as light refreshments.

Little Big Girl is a charming children’s book based on a true story and is the debut publication for Leaning Pole Press, a new imprint of Chickasaw Press.

Amanda Cobb-Greetham, Ph.D. (Chickasaw) is an award-winning scholar, curator, and professor of Native American studies, currently serving as the John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professorship in Native Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2024). She received her B.A. from Southeastern Oklahoma State University in 1992 and her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1997. She previously served at OU as a professor and chair of the Department of Native American Studies.

She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2023) and Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship (2021-2022) for her current research project, Bright, Golden Haze: Oklahoma/Indian Identity in Myth and Memory, and received the American Book Award for Listening to Our Grandmothers’ Stories: The Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females (2002).

From 2007-12, she served her tribe, the Chickasaw Nation, as the Administrator of the Division of History and Culture. During her tenure, she was instrumental in launching the state-of-the-art Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur and directing the Chickasaw Press, the first tribal publishing house of its kind. She was inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame in 2023.

Known for her scholarship, this is Cobb-Greetham’s first foray into children’s literature. Cobb-Greetham based Little Big Girl on the true story of Lila Lee, her 105-pound rescue dog. She and her husband have adopted six rescue dogs over the course of their marriage and adoption is a topic Cobb-Greetham is passionate about, as seen in the story.

Illustrated by Danielle Fixico, a Chickasaw-Muscogee-Choctaw artist and former student of Cobb-Greetham, the story takes readers through the heartache and happiness of a dog most deem “too big” to love, and touches on the complexities of loss and belonging through a humorous approach.

Little Big Girl also offers readers information on pet adoption and provides a guided discussion page of the book to assist families in discussing the story’s complicated emotions and themes with children.

About Leaning Pole Press

Established in 2023, the new imprint allows Chickasaw Press to support the mission of the Chickasaw Nation by providing authors and scholars who are Chickasaw citizens with an outlet to create exceptional published works, encompassing a variety of genres and subjects beyond the Chickasaw historical and cultural experience.

For more information, contact Chickasaw Press at (580) 436-7282 or www.chickasawpress.com.