Harjo, Joy

Joy Harjo is the winner of the 2022 Academy of American Poets Leadership Award. She was appointed the 23rd United States poet laureate in 2019, the first Native American to hold the position. Harjo is the author of nine previous books of poetry, including An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, and How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior. She has also edited several anthologies of Native American writing, including When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. An active musician, she performs with her saxophone nationally and internationally. Two new books are celebrating her 50-year body of work as well as her three terms as a U.S. poet laureate. Catching the Light (Why I Write) (Yale University Press) is a lyrical meditation that reflects on significant points of illumination, experience, and questioning from her half-century as a poet. Comprised of intimate vignettes that take us through her life journey as a youth in the late 1960s, a single mother, and a champion of Native nations, the book offers a fresh understanding of how poetry functions as an expression of purpose, spirit, community, and memory. Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years (W. W. Norton & Company) is a curated selection of Harjo’s work, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment.