The Voice of What Can’t Be Spoken: A Conversation with U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate and author of the memoir Crazy Brave, in conversation with Katie Condon, author of Praying Naked.

With an introduction by Thomas DiPiero, dean of Dedman College of Arts and Sciences at SMU.

Joy Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry, including An American Sunrise and She Had Some Horses, and an award-winning memoir Crazy Brave. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation for Lifetime Achievement and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. In 2019, Harjo was appointed the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold the position.

Katie Condon is the author of Praying Naked, winner of the 2018 The Journal Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize. Her poetry appears in the New Yorker, Tin House, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day. Katie has received support from Emory University, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Inprint. She is an assistant professor of English at Southern Methodist University and lives in Dallas with her husband, the writer Richard Hermes.

Thomas DiPiero is dean of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and professor in the Departments of English and World Languages and Literatures. He is the author or co-editor of White Men Aren’tIllicit Sex: Identity Politics in Early Modern Europe, edited with Pat Gill; and Dangerous Truths and Criminal Passions: The Evolution of the French Novel 1569-1791. He is a recognized authority on Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. DiPiero came to SMU in August 2014 from the University of Rochester, where he served as dean of humanities and interdisciplinary studies in the College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering and professor of French and of Visual and Cultural Studies.