Although Diane Glancy first attracted critical interest as a poet, she has expanded her literary prowess to become an accomplished essayist, novelist, and playwright. She also has edited several collections on multicultural writings and written numerous plays and screenplays. She has published more than thirty books.

Diane Glancy is recognized for having one of the most prolific and multifaceted voices in contemporary poetry. Her work has been published by a multifarious group of academic and independent presses, from the University of Nebraska Press, which is known for its Native American publications, to the liberal arts-based Chax Press. Glancy has published numerous compilations of her poetry, often employing an assortment of presses because of the versatility of her work. In an interview with Jennifer Andrews in American Indian Quarterly (Fall, 2002), Glancy explains that her publications need “presses with different viewpoints,” a testament to the malleability of her work as poet and writer. A woman of both Cherokee and English-German ancestry, Glancy merges these two identities in her body of work, often switching between colloquial and formal language structures within the same poem. She has described this emblematic attribute of her poetry as writing with a “split voice.” Her ability to intertwine two vastly different cultures through language has distinguished her as one of the most important poets in Native American literature, with her work appearing in more than forty anthologies. She has led several poetry workshops throughout the Midwest and served as the artist-in-residence of the State Arts Council in Oklahoma. During the spring quarter of 1998, Glancy was recognized as the Edlstein-Keller Minnesota Writer of Distinction at the University of Minnesota.

Her honors and awards for poetry and prose include the Lake and Prairies Prize (1986) for One Age in a Dream, the Iowa Woman Poetry Prize (1987), the Capricorn Prize from the Writer’s Voice of New York (1988), the North American Indian Prose Award (1992), the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation (1993), the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America (1993), the Minnesota Book Award in poetry (1999), the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry (2001) from the Nimrod Journal, the Stevens Poetry Prize (2001), an Oklahoma Book Award (2003) for The Mask Maker, the Juniper Poetry Prize (2003) for Primer of the Obsolete, the William Rockhill Nelson Award from the Writer’s Place and the Kansas City Star (2008), and the Expressive Arts Grant from the National Museum of the American Indian (2009). Lone Dog’s Winter Count received the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. Glancy has received fellowships from numerous institutions, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation. Her playwriting has been recognized by receipt of the Oklahoma Theater Award (1987), the Five Civilized Tribes Playwriting Laureate Prize (1994-1996, 1988-1990, 1984-1986), the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers, Prose-Playwriting Award(1997), the Sundance Screenwriting Fellowship (1998), and the Many Voices Playwriting Fellowship (1995, 2001).