Indigenous Poets Series: Laura Tohe and Max Early
For BPL’s June Indigenous Poetry Series, Laura Tohe and Max Early discusses their works.
Join this one-of-a-kind series and find the full roster of 2022 poets here.
Laura Tohe is Diné and the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate. She is Sleepy Rock People clan and born for the Bitter Water People clan. She published 3 books of poetry, an anthology of Native women’s writing, and an oral history on the Navajo Code Talkers. Her librettos, Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio (2008) and Nahasdzáán in the Glittering World (2021), performed in Arizona and France, respectively. Among her awards are the 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship, the 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award, and twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is Professor Emerita with Distinction from Arizona State University.
Max Early (Laguna Pueblo) is a 2022 inaugural IN-NA-PO fellow and a recent MFA graduate from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His poems are published in Inkwell Journal and forthcoming from Poetry Northwest and Zócalo Public Square. His first poetry collection is Ears of Corn: Listen (3: A Taos Press). He has received fellowships from Writing By Writers, Orion in the Wilderness, SAR’s Indigenous Writer, and Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. His clans are Tsina Hanu (Turkey People) and Kwaya Waashch’ee (child of the Bear). Early lives in the village of Paguate, NM.
The Indigenous Poetry Series is made possible with support from The Poetry Foundation.
