Poetry Reading: Heid E. Erdrich in Conversation with Tacey M. Atsitty

Heid and Tacey will share selections of their work and respond to the artwork featured in the exhibition. The event will end with a reading of Heid’s new poem, Ways of Water / Wash Over, commissioned for A Shared Body. This event is free, virtual, and open to the public. Read more about the poets below!

Heid E. Erdrich is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain. She is an author of several books of poetry and prose and is an interdisciplinary artist. Her new book, Little Big Bully from Penguin, won a National Poetry Series award. She authored seven books of poetry, a non-fiction work on Indigenous foods, and edited New Poets of Native Nations anthology for Graywolf Press. Her honors include a National Poetry Series award and two Minnesota Book Awards. She teaches in Augsburg University’s Low-residency MFA.  Her poemeos (poem films and videos) created in collaboration with Elizabeth Day, Jonathan Thunder and Trevino Brings Plenty, have won Best of Show and Best of Fest awards. Heid has curated dozens of art exhibits focused on Native American artists. In 2016, she was a contributing artist to the Creative City Challenge award-winning public art project Wolf and Moose by Christopher Lutter-Gardella. Heid has collaborated with Rosy Simas Danse since 2016, and she has contributed to works choreographed by Ananya Dance, Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theater, and others. Heid has written plays produced by Pangea World theater. She performs her poetry across the country, sometimes collaborating with musicians, visual artists, and dancers. Her first exhibit as a featured artist was Skew Lines, May 2019, created in a dual residency with Rosy Simas for SooVac gallery in Minneapolis.

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). She was born in Logan, UT, grew up in Kirtland, NM but is originally from Cove, AZ.  Atsitty is a recipient of the Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize, Morning Star Creative Writing Award, and the Philip Freund Prize. She holds bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY; EPOCH; Kenyon Review Online; Prairie Schooner; When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry; and other publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018).  She is the director of the Navajo Film Festival, poetry judge for the Eggtooth Editions Chapbook Contest, a member of Advisory Council for BYU’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, a board member for Lightscatter Press of SLC, a founding member of the Intermountain All-Women Hoop Dance Competition Board of Directors at This is the Place Heritage Park, and Book Reviews Editor for the Southeast Review.    She is a PhD student in Creative Writing at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where she lives with her husband.