Martino, Teresa Tsimmu 1965(?)-

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MARTINO, Teresa Tsimmu 1965(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1965. Education: Vale Equestrian Center, teaching certificate.

ADDRESSES: Home—Vashon Island, WA. Offıce— WolfTown!, P.O. Box 13115, Burton, WA 98013. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: WolfTown! (nonprofit horse and wildlife sanctuary), Burton, WA, founder and director; former horse-facility director. Artist and author.

WRITINGS:

Learning from Eagle, Living with Coyote, Crown (New York, NY), 1993.

The Work We Do (story and poetry collection), Vashon Island Allied Arts (Vashon Island, WA), 1994.

Trick from the Sky, Wind Like Horse Hair (play), first produced by Vashon Island Allied Arts, 1995.

The Wolf, the Woman, the Wilderness: A True Story ofReturning Home, NewSage Press (Troutdale, OR), 1997.

Dancer on the Grass: True Stories about Horses andPeople (essays), NewSage Press (Troutdale, OR), 1999.

Coyote Physics, Wolftown Publishing (Burton, WA), 2001.

Also contributor to periodicals, including Flying Changes Magazine.

SIDELIGHTS: The daughter of an Osage mother and Italian-American father, Teresa Tsimmu Martino grew up with a great love for horses that later expanded into a love and deep appreciation for wild animals such as wolves. She learned to ride horses when she was a little girl, and she later graduated from the prestigious Vale Equestrian Center in England and became a director and trainer at a horse facility. Life changed dramatically for her one day when, deciding to defy her employers rather than force one of the horses she was training to perform jumping exercises it clearly did not wish to do, she quit her job and moved to an island off the Washington state coast. Here, she lived in a cabin and founded WolfTown!, a nonprofit sanctuary and education center for wolves that also shelters horses that have suffered from owner abuse or neglect. Martino writes about her life's experiences with animals in her books, including the autobiographical The Wolf, the Woman, the Wilderness: A True Story of Returning Home and Dancer on the Grass: True Stories about Horses and People.

In The Wolf, the Woman, the Wilderness, a story that Library Journal reviewer Vicki L. Toy Smith compared to Born Free, Joy Adamson's tale of a lion cub, Martino tells how she helped raise a wolf and successfully reintroduced it into the wild. More than this, the author reflects on her beliefs regarding humanity's relationship with nature and her Native American heritage in a book that Smith called "an affecting narrative."

Dancer on the Grass is a collection of autobiographical essays that convey the author's lifelong passion for horses. Martino tells of her early life training and later work as a cross-country equestrian rider, and how she was transformed into a sanctuary director who protects horses and wildlife. A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that Martino's book suffers somewhat from poor editing and proofreading; nevertheless, the heart of the book still comes through. As the critic noted, "Her passionate prose reads with the revelation and honesty of a schoolgirl's picked-lock diary."