Award-winning poet, author and musician Joy Harjo, a U. of I. professor of creative writing and of English, who also is affiliated with American Indian Studies, will give a reading Sept. 16 as part of the Creative Writers Showcase of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Her reading will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium at Spurlock Museum. U. of I. music professor Gabriel Solis will join her for a discussion of her work. The event is free and open to the public.
The theme for a series of events this year by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities is “Intersections,” and Harjo’s reading is the kickoff for those events.
Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke Nation of Oklahoma, and her work includes seven books of poetry, including “How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems,” “She Had Some Horses,” and “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky.” Her eighth collection of poetry, “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings,” will be released this year.
Harjo was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014, and she also has received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Rasmuson United States Artist Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.
Her memoir, “Crazy Brave,” won the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. She is using her Guggenheim Fellowship to complete her second memoir.
Harjo has written an award-winning children’s book, “The Good Luck Cat,” and a young adult coming-of-age book, “For a Girl Becoming,” which won a Moonbeam Award and a Silver Medal from the Independent Publishers Awards. She also has co-edited an anthology of contemporary Native women’s writing, “Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Native Women’s Writing of North America.”
Harjo is a musician, performing on the saxophone as a soloist and with her band, The Arrow Dynamics. She has released four CDs of original music, and she won a Native American Music Award in 2009 for Best Female Artist of the Year for “Winding Through the Milky Way.”
Harjo’s reading is co-sponsored by the Spurlock Museum.
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