Joy Harjo

Hawai’i Book and Music Festival

Photo of Joy Harjo by Karen Kuehn

Joy Harjo is the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, and a world-renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of plays, children’s books, two memoirs, and nine books of poetry—among them the anthologies When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through and Living Nations, Living Words. As a musician, she has produced seven award-winning albums. She received the Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

Live Online Event

Living Nations, Living Words: A Conversation with Joy Harjo and Pacific Poets

Saturday, October 23, 3:30 pm (HST)

Special Guests: Brandy Nālani McDougall, Kanaka ʻŌiwi poet and Associate Professor of American Studies at UH Mānoa; Noʻu Revilla, queer ʻŌiwi poet and Assistant Professor of English at UH Mānoa; Lehua M. Taitano, queer Chamoru writer and co-founder of Art 25: Art in the Twenty-fifth Century; and Mahealani Wendt, poet and community activist. Moderator: Craig Santos Perez, Chamoru author and Professor of English at UH Mānoa.

Lead Event Sponsors: Hawaiʻi Book and Music Festival and the Halekulani Hotel

BTSS Series Sponsors: Hawai‘i Community Foundation; Kamehameha Schools