Join Esther Belin and 2024 James Welch Prize-winning poets Kara Briggs and Kateri Menominee for an in-person reading and celebration of their work. Presented in partnership with Poetry Northwest and In-Na-Po (Indigenous Nations Poets), this event is free and open to the public with RSVP.
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Events at Poets House are popular, and seating is first-come, first-seated. We have several seats reserved for people with access needs. If events reach capacity, seating will be available in an overflow viewing room.
About the winners:
Kara Briggs, a citizen of the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, descended Yakama Nation, is a poet, journalist and author who lives north of Seattle. Her forthcoming book Rivers in my Veins from St. Julian Press is her first poetry collection. She recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Art. As an undergraduate she studied abroad with Irish poets in Ireland. She was a national columnist for ICT and investigative journalist at The Oregonian. She is a former president of the Native American Journalists Association. Her poetry is lyrical and gives readers a view on the deep connections tribes have to their lands and waters. She writes in poetic forms, particularly Japanese forms of haiku and haibun. She also writes in the rhythms of social dance songs from her tribes. Deep in her work is a tribal political perspective that seeks to elevate the reader’s understanding of contemporary Native peoples. She serves as vice president of Ecotrust, where she leads work with tribes across the West Coast.
Kateri Menominee writes from the smokey anchorage of Gnoozhekaning. She listens to Lofi Legend of Zelda playlists and plays Fallout.
About the judge:
2024 judge Esther Belin (Diné) is among the myriad of indigenous peoples on the planet to survive in urbanized areas. She is a graduate from the following institutions: UC Berkeley, IAIA, Antioch University. She considers the following locations her homeland: LA, Durango, Diné bike’yah. Her writing and art grows from an is an offering to the collective humanity, bila’ ashdla’ii. Esther is the author of two poetry books and coeditor of The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature. Belin’s visual art combines a variety of disciplines and works to reframe the mythical primitivism often associated with Indigenous cultures. She is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and lives on the Colorado side of the four corners. Belin is a member of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́:Diné Writers’ Collective, and teaches in the Native American and Indigenous Studies department at Fort Lewis College and in the low-residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
About the Prize:
Poetry Northwest’s James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets is awarded for two outstanding poems, each written by an Indigenous U.S. poet. The prize is named for Blackfeet and Gros Ventre writer James Welch, whose early poems were featured in Poetry Northwest and who went on to become one of the region’s most important writers.
The finalists selected by poets from the board and advisory committee of In-Na-Po (Indigenous Nations Poets) with the editors of Poetry Northwest are Mary Leauna Christensen, Kinsale Drake, Max Early, Chris Hoshnic, Ibe Liebenberg, Casandra Lopez, Malia Maxwell, and Michael Wasson.