In an initiative made possible by The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the Center for Contemporary Arts is hosting live poetry readings via Instagram Live.
This virtual event will feature readings by Layli Longsoldier and other poets from When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. Hosted by Elizabeth Jacobson, Santa Fe's Poet Laureate.
Layli Long Soldier received a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Bard College. She is the author of WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and was short-listed for the National Book Award. Long Soldier has received a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and a Whiting Writers’ Award. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Elizabeth Jacobson received an MFA from Columbia University in creative writing and a BA from Rollins College. She is the author of Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019) which won the New Measure Poetry Prize selected by Marianne Boruch, and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. Jacobson is the founding director of the WingSpan Poetry Project, a not-for-profit which since 2013 has conducted weekly poetry classes in battered family and homeless shelters in Santa Fe, New Mexico. WingSpan has received four grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and a Community Partners Award from the Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families. She is the Reviews Editor for Terrain.org and poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico.