Bookworks, the City of Albuquerque, and Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers present

United States Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo!

Harjo will read poetry from her new book, American Sunrise (W.W. Norton).

KiMo Theatre, 423 Central Ave NW

at KiMo Theatre

December 7, 2019 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
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Time: 8:00pm     Day: Saturday     Doors: 7:30pm     Ages: All Ages    
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About American Sunrise:

In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family's lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother's death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo's personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. A descendent of storytellers and "one of our finest--and most complicated--poets" (Los Angeles Review of Books), Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Creek Nation and was named United States Poet Laureate in 2019. Harjo’s nine books of poetry include An American SunriseConflict 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 DreamsA 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.

"[Harjo's] poetry is light and elixir, the very best prescription for us in wounded times."--Sandra Cisneros, The Millions

"Joy Harjo is one of the real poets of our mixed, fermenting, end-of-century imagination."--Adrienne Rich

"Joy Harjo is a giant-hearted, gorgeous, and glorious gift to the world. Her belief in art, in spirit, is so powerful, it can't help but spill over to us--lucky readers"--Pam Houston

Event date: 

Saturday, December 7, 2019 - 8:00pm

Event address: 

KiMo Theatre

423 Central Ave NW

Albuquerque, NM 87102

An American Sunrise: Poems Cover Image

If you wish to enter the signing line after the reading, you must have a copy of An American Sunrise. Poems (Hardcover)

By Joy Harjo

$25.95 

ISBN: 9781324003861 

Availability: On Our Shelves Now 

bkwrks.com/joy-harjo

 

Published: W. W. Norton & Company - August 13th, 2019