Mark Turcotte

Mark Turcotte was born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1958 and grew up in North Dakota on the Turtle Mountain Reservation and, later, in Lansing. He holds an MFA from Western Michigan University. 

An enrolled member of the Anishinaabe–Turtle Mountain Band, Turcotte is the author of four books of poetry: Exploding Chippewas (NU Press, 2002); Le Chant de la Route et Autres Poèmes [The Song of the Road and Other Poems] (Vague Verte Editions, 2001), a bilingual collection; Songs of Our Ancestors (Children’s Press, 1995); and The Feathered Heart (Michigan State University Press, 1995). 

Turcotte is the winner of the inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award, and the Wisconsin Arts Board named him a literary fellow in both 1999 and 2003. 

Turcotte lives and works in Chicago, where he is Distinguished Writer in Residence at DePaul University. In 2025, he was appointed the sixth poet laureate of Illinois through 2029.