Joy Harjo, Reading by U.S. Poet Laureate In conversation with Beth Piatote Wednesday, April 22, 2020 5:30 – 7:00pm Reading + Conversation 7:00 – 7:30pm Book Signing + Reception David Brower Center 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 Co-sponsored by the Arts Research Center and Engaging the Senses Foundation, with additional support from the English and Ethnic Studies Departments, the Native American Studies Program, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, and the Center for Race & Gender NOTE: Tickets required, distributed through the Arts Research Center. Available free on Eventbrite a week prior to the event (Monday, April 13). Please visit our website at arts.berkeley.edu for more information as the date approaches. Join us for an evening of reading and conversation with the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo. She is the first Native American to hold the position. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Joy Harjo is an internationally known award-winning poet, writer, performer, and saxophone player of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She will be in conversation with Beth Piatote, writer and associate professor of Native American Studies at UC Berkeley. Joy Harjo’s nine books of poetry include An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave won several awards, including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. She is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for proven mastery in the art of poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the United States Artist Fellowship. In 2014 she was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame. A renowned musician, Harjo performs with her saxophone nationally and internationally, solo and with her band, the Arrow Dynamics. She has five award-winning CDs of music including the award-winning album Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears and Winding Through the Milky Way, which won a Native American Music Award for Best Female Artist of the Year in 2009. Harjo’s latest is a book of poetry from Norton, An American Sunrise. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Beth Piatote is author of two books: a mixed-genre collection, The Beadworkers: Stories (Counterpoint 2019); and a scholarly monograph, Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature (Yale 2013), as well as numerous essays and short stories stories in journals and anthologies. Her recent work, The Beadworkers, has been long-listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the PEN/Bingham Prize. She is currently associate professor of Native American Studies, where she specializes in Native American literature and law; Nez Perce language and literature; Indigenous Language Revitalization; and creative writing. She earned a PhD from Stanford University.