Esther Belin

Esther Belin, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, was born in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1968. She earned an MFA in poetry from Antioch University and a BA in Native American studies from University of California, Berkeley. She studied poetry with Arthur Sze at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she earned her AA in creative writing. 

Belin is a coeditor of The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature (University of Arizona Press, 2021) and the author of two collections of poetry: Of Cartography (University of Arizona Press, 2017) and From the Belly of My Beauty (University of Arizona Press, 1999), which won the American Book Award in 2000. 

Belin is the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in North American Indian and Indigenous Literary Studies at Michigan State University and is a poetry faculty mentor in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ creative writing MFA program.

A board member for In-Na-Po, Belin is also the inaugural poet laureate of Durango, Colorado, through 2026. She calls the region just east of Dibé Ntsaa, the northern boundary mountain of Dinétah, her home.