Lecture and Book Signing by Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate, is the first Native American Poet Laureate in the history of the position. She was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951, and is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She received a B.A. from the University of New Mexico before earning an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1978. Harjo is a poet, musician, and playwright. She is the author of several books of poetry, including An American Sunrise (W. W. Norton, 2019); The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (W. W. Norton, 1994), which received the Oklahoma Book Arts Award; and In Mad Love and War (Wesleyan University Press, 1990), which received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. Her memoir Crazy Brave (W. W. Norton, 2012) won the 2013 PEN Center USA literary award for creative nonfiction. Harjo has also published collections of interviews and conversations, children’s books, and collaborative art texts.