about the author

Joy Harjo is a poet and musician from the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation. After growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo attended the Institute of American Indian Arts and the University of New Mexico, where she began composing poetry. Harjo has held various positions at universities across Turtle Island teaching American Indian studies, writing, and English. She is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years, An American Sunrise, and In Mad Love and War. In addition to poetry, she composes memoirs, children’ s literature, and music. Her band, the Arrow Dynamics Band, have released seven critically-acclaimed albums. Harjo is a three-term National Poet Laureate, winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts, and American Book Award, and sits as the current Artist-in-Residence at Tulsa’s Bob Dylan Center and Chair of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.