Indigenous Peoples Day Poetry Celebration
Join award-winning authors Sherwin Bitsui, Joan Naviyuk Kane, and Tommy Pico for a poetry reading of new poems. Of Sherwin Bitsui's poetry, Library Journal writes, “Bitsui’s poetry returns things to their basic elements and voice in a flowing language rife with illuminating images," and went on to call his work "serious and innovative.” "Through a rigorous, proximate gaze and precise linguistic hybridity," writes Ploughshares, "[Joan Naviyuk] Kane unlocks moments of felt thought in which personal, cultural, and geologic experience converge." And Dan Chiasson, in The New Yorker, writes of Pico's work: "Sylvia Plath’s simplest line may be one of her most devastating: 'I am only thirty.' I feel the same shudder when I read Pico’s blunt report: 'I am 34.'”
A celebration of three powerful, affecting and innovative writers, this event is also part of an ongoing series intended to encourage discussion around our country's complicated history with land ownership. The reading will be followed by a short conversation and audience questions. This event will begin with a welcome from Hadrien Coumans from the Lenape Center.
Sherwin Bitsui (Diné) is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is Diné of the Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl’izilani (Many Goats Clan). He is the author of Shapeshift, Flood Song and Dissolve. His honors include a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship. He is also the recipient of a 2010 PEN Open Book Award, an American Book Award, and a Whiting Writers Award. He is on faculty at Northern Arizona University.
Joan Naviyuk Kane is Inupiaq with family from King Island (Ugiuvak) and Mary’s Igloo, Alaska. She is the author of eight collections of poetry and prose, including Dark Traffic, which is forthcoming in the 2021 Pitt Poetry Series. She currently teaches poetry and creative nonfiction in the Department of English at Harvard University, is a lecturer in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora at Tufts University, and was founding faculty of the graduate creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and the Donald Hall Prize, and has been a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellow, the Indigenous Writer in Residence at the School for Advanced Research, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, and the Hilles Bush Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is a 2020-2021 Visiting Fellow of Race and Ethnicity at The Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is a poet, podcaster, and tv writer. He is the author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, and Feed. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn. He co-curates the reading series Poets with Attitude, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot and Scream, Queen! is poetry editor at Catapult Magazine, writes on the FX show Reservation Dogs, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub. He is also the recipient of the 2017 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Fiction & Poetry.
Hadrien Coumans is co-founder and co-director of Lenape Center and Advisor for Well-being. He is of service to individuals, organizations and communities, both locally and internationally, through advising, advocacy, public speaking and ceremony. Hadrien lectures at Columbia University.
Please register for this free Zoom event. Registered audience members will receive a Zoom link prior to the event.
Join award-winning authors Sherwin Bitsui, Joan Naviyuk Kane, and Tommy Pico for a poetry reading of new poems. Of Sherwin Bitsui's poetry, Library Journal writes, “Bitsui’s poetry returns things to their basic elements and voice in a flowing language rife with illuminating images," and went on to call his work "serious and innovative.” "Through a rigorous, proximate gaze and precise linguistic hybridity," writes Ploughshares, "[Joan Naviyuk] Kane unlocks moments of felt thought in which personal, cultural, and geologic experience converge." And Dan Chiasson, in The New Yorker, writes of Pico's work: "Sylvia Plath’s simplest line may be one of her most devastating: 'I am only thirty.' I feel the same shudder when I read Pico’s blunt report: 'I am 34.'”
A celebration of three powerful, affecting and innovative writers, this event is also part of an ongoing series intended to encourage discussion around our country's complicated history with land ownership. The reading will be followed by a short conversation and audience questions. This event will begin with a welcome from Hadrien Coumans from the Lenape Center.
Sherwin Bitsui (Diné) is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is Diné of the Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl’izilani (Many Goats Clan). He is the author of Shapeshift, Flood Song and Dissolve. His honors include a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship. He is also the recipient of a 2010 PEN Open Book Award, an American Book Award, and a Whiting Writers Award. He is on faculty at Northern Arizona University.
Joan Naviyuk Kane is Inupiaq with family from King Island (Ugiuvak) and Mary’s Igloo, Alaska. She is the author of eight collections of poetry and prose, including Dark Traffic, which is forthcoming in the 2021 Pitt Poetry Series. She currently teaches poetry and creative nonfiction in the Department of English at Harvard University, is a lecturer in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora at Tufts University, and was founding faculty of the graduate creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and the Donald Hall Prize, and has been a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellow, the Indigenous Writer in Residence at the School for Advanced Research, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, and the Hilles Bush Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is a 2020-2021 Visiting Fellow of Race and Ethnicity at The Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is a poet, podcaster, and tv writer. He is the author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, and Feed. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn. He co-curates the reading series Poets with Attitude, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot and Scream, Queen! is poetry editor at Catapult Magazine, writes on the FX show Reservation Dogs, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub. He is also the recipient of the 2017 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Fiction & Poetry.
Hadrien Coumans is co-founder and co-director of Lenape Center and Advisor for Well-being. He is of service to individuals, organizations and communities, both locally and internationally, through advising, advocacy, public speaking and ceremony. Hadrien lectures at Columbia University.
Please register for this free Zoom event. Registered audience members will receive a Zoom link prior to the event.
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