Bunny McBride

Carol Ann (Bunny) McBride is an American author of a wide range of nonfiction books on subjects ranging from cultural survival and wildlife conservation to Native Americans.^[1] Her most recent ethnohistory book is Indians in Eden: Wabanakis and Rusticators on Maine's Mt.Desert Island (Down East Books, 2009). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she regularly published her poetry and essays in the Christian Science Monitor, and reported on her travels in China, West Africa, East Africa, and northern Europe. Her articles appeared in various US newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, International Wildlife, Travel & Leisure, Sierra, Yankee Magazine, Downeast, and Reader's Digest. From 1981 on, she was actively involved in oral history and community development projects with Micmac Indians in Maine.^[2]

An award-winning author, Bunny has taught ethnographic writing and organized creative writing workshops. In 1999, she received an official commendation from the Maine State Legislature in recognition of the "tremendous contribution" made in her writings about Maine Indian women, in particular Penobscot dancer Molly Spotted Elk.^[3] The Maine Historical Society selected this acclaimed biography as one of the one hundred most "notable" books written in or about Maine (2000).^[4]

McBride has served as a visiting professor in cultural anthropology at Principia College, Elsah, Illinois (1981–1992) and the Salt Center for Documentary Field Studies, Portland, Maine (1995). She has curated several museum exhibits, including the national-award-winning exhibit Indians and Rusticators (2012) at the Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, Maine.^[5] She serves on a number of boards, including the Women’s World Summit Foundation, based in Geneva, Switzerland (2003- ). An adjunct lecturer of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University (1996- ), she now lives in Bath, a town on the coast of Maine, with her husband, Dutch anthropologist Harald E.L. Prins. They have co-authored a study on the indigenous cultural history of Mount Desert Island, as well as the book Indians in Eden, and are collaborating on a life history of a Penobscot Indian combat veteran of World War II and the Korean War. They have also collaborated on other books, articles, and museum exhibits.

McBride was born in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1950. She is the daughter of retired CBS Executive and NBC anchor Robert J. McBride and Cynthia Martin. Having majored in art and English literature at Michigan State University (BA 1972), McBride continued her graduate studies in art (painting and sculpture) at Boston University, and completed a master's in cultural anthropology at Columbia University (1980).^[6]