- Writer
Norman has been a prolific writer in a variety of styles.
How Glooskap Outwits the Ice Giants,
The owl-scatterer, and
Between heaven and earth are written for juvenile audiences. His books on Canadian folklore include
The wishing bone cycle (Cree),
Who met the ice lynx (Cree),
Who-Paddled-Backward-With-Trout (Cree),
The girl who dreamed only geese (Inuit)
Trickster and the fainting birds (Algonquin), and
Northern tales (Eskimo).
Northern Tales, translated into Italian and Japanese, was Norman's first book translated into foreign language.
In Fond Rememberance of Me is not only an English translation of Noah and the Ark stories as told by a Manitoba Inuit elder, it is also a memoir of the friendship that Norman kindles with Helen Tanizaki, a writer who is translating these same stories into Japanese before her death.
Norman describes
The Bird Artist, a novel, as his most conservative book structurally, though not psychologically. Time magazine named
The Bird Artist one of its Best Five Books for 1994. It also was awarded the New England Booksellers Association Prize in Fiction, and Norman received a Lannan Literary Award for this book.
The Bird Artist and
The Northern Lights were finalists for the National Book Award.
The Northern Lights was completed with assistance from the Whiting Writers' Award. He received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets for
The Wishing Bone Cycle. In
On the trail of a ghost, an article published by
National Geographic, Norman writes about Japan’s haiku master, Matsuo Bash?'s 1200-mile walk in 1689, and the journey's epic log, entitled
Oku no Hosomichi. His book,
My Famous Evening: Nova Scotia Sojourns, Diaries & Preoccupations was published under National Geographic's "Directions" travel series. It includes a chapter on the Nova Scotia poet Elizabeth Bishop.
There are also several early books published in small numbers. These include:
The Woe Shirt,
Arrives Without Dogs, and
Bay of Fundy Journal, amongst others.
- Teacher
In 1999, Norman taught at Middlebury College in Vermont.Norman became Goucher College's Writer in Residence in 2003. In 2006, he was appointed a Marsh professor at University of Vermont. Norman now teaches creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of Maryland, College Park.
- Professional affiliations
Norman has contributed to book review periodicals (
The New York Times Book Review;
Los Angeles Times Book Review;
National Geographic Traveler), participated on literary journals' editorial staff (
Conjunctions:
Ploughshares), and been a member of the board of directors for PEN New York and PEN/Faulkner group, Washington, D.C.