F250.
Indigenous-Aboriginal American Writers Caucus
Friday, March 10, 2023
6:30 pm to 7:45 pm
Indigenous writers and scholars participate fluidly in AWP, teaching, directing affiliated programs, working as independent writers or scholars, and/or within community language revitalization efforts. Annually imparting field-related craft, pedagogy, celebrations, and concerns as programming understood by Indigenous-Native writers from the Americas and surrounding island nations is necessary. AWP Conferences began our caucus discussions in 2010. Essential program development continues in 2023.
Participants
Rena Priest is a poet and an enrolled member of the Lummi Nation. She has been appointed to serve as Washington State Poet Laureate for the term of April 2021–2023. Priest has published two collections of poetry and is the recipient of an Allied Arts Professional Poets Award.
Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and Founding Director of Indigenous Nation Poets, has published five poetry collections including Copper Yearning. An emeritus professor at UW—Milwaukee and MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts, she is Anishinaabe from White Earth.
Deborah Taffa is the director of the MFA creative writing program at IAIA in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Winner of the PEN Jean Stein Grant, her memoir Whiskey Tender is forthcoming from HarperCollins Harper in 2023. A Public Space, MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Tin House, and Kranzberg Fellow, she's from the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo.
