Joan Kane (Iñupiaq) is a poet who so carefully crafts her descriptions of ice and long northern days, birds and light, wood and rock, that readers are intimately and gently transported into the landscape of Alaska, not as a witness but as a part of this world.
Natalie Diaz (Mojave/Pima) writes unabashedly intrepid poems with a sinuous strength and a sharp beauty to them. The rez is not an easy place to be and a place she describes boldly. She says my brother is a meth head. History is a lingering present. She says my heart is broken. Sleep is troubled. Hunger is real -- and so is Natalie's work.
This week the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) honored its 2012 and 2013 Literature Fellows at the Association of Tribal Libraries, Archives and Museums (ATALM) conference held at the Santa Ana Pueblo's Tamaya Resort in New Mexico.
