Join the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) from Sunday, July 6, through Thursday, July 10, 2025, as the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFACW) program presents its 2025 July Residency, welcoming a new cohort of incoming graduate students. Visiting writers, acclaimed for their work in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and screenwriting, will read and perform alongside several of our full-time mentors. Each evening will engage audiences with poetry, memoir, or fiction from some of today’s most vibrant and vital voices.
We are pleased to invite the public to attend the July Evening Reading Series events, held virtually via livestream and in person in the CLE Commons Room 201 on the IAIA campus at 83 Avan Nu Po Road, Santa Fe, NM 87508.
All readings are open and free to the public. We hope to see you there!
For questions, please contact IAIA MFACW Program Coordinator Veronica Bustamante at
dmVyb25pY2EgISBidXN0YW1hbnRlIHwgaWFpYSAhIGVkdQ==.
Biographies—
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican American and Indigenous poet and novelist from the Southwestern desert. She is known for her work exploring themes of identity, family, and the borderlands, often drawing on her own experiences in the Imperial Valley of Southern California. Givhan is the author of several acclaimed poetry collections and novels, including River Woman, River Demon, and Trinity Sight, which won the Southwest Book Award. Her novel Salt Bones (Little, Brown) is debuting on July 22, 2025. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices.
Pam Houston is the author of the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, as well as two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound; two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat; and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, all published by W.W. Norton. Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Century, among other anthologies. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award, and several teaching awards. In addition to teaching in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Houston is Professor of English at UC Davis and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers, which puts on between seven and ten writers’ gatherings per year in places as diverse as Boulder, Colorado; Tomales Bay, California; and Chamonix, France. She lives at 9,000 feet above sea level on a 120-acre homestead near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. A book of letters between Pam and environmental activist Amy Irvine will be published by Torrey House Press in October 2020.
Anne Haven McDonnell holds an interdisciplinary MA degree in Environmental Humanities from Prescott College and an MFA degree from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, in Creative Writing. Anne was the recipient of a Master’s Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation and the American Indian College Fund, and her graduate manuscript won the Jason Wenger Award for Excellence at UAA. Anne’s creative and scholarly work focuses on an exploration of human and cultural relationships with the living world. In the summer of 2018, Anne taught poetry for the Orion Environmental Writing Workshop. Her writing has been published in Orion Magazine, The Georgia Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, Flyway, Alpinist Magazine, About Place Journal, Fourth River, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. Her work has also been included in several anthologies including Nature and Environmental Writing: A Craft Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Press, 2016), Rewilding: Poems for the Environment (Flexible Press, 2020), and Queer Nature (Autumn House Press, 2021). Her poems won the fifth annual Terrain.org poetry prize and an international ecopoetry Ginkgo Prize. Anne is an associate poetry editor at the online journal Terrain.org. She teaches poetry, environmental literature, English composition, global climate justice, and critical theory at IAIA.
Learn more at
https://iaia.edu/2025-mfacw-july-evening-reading-series/
Sunday, July 6 at 6:00 pm (MST): Readings by Jennifer Givham (Mexican American), Pam Houston, and Anne Haven McDonnell—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
Monday, July 7 at 6:00 pm (MST): Readings by Chip Livingston (Mixed-blood Creek), Kelli Jo Ford (Cherokee Nation), and Michaela M.S. Redcherries (Northern Cheyenne Nation)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
Tuesday, July 8 at 6:00 pm (MST): Film Clips and Interview Featuring Billy Luther (Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo) and Deborah Taffa (Quechan Nation, Laguna Pueblo, and Chicana)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus, no livestream available
Wednesday, July 9 at 6:00 pm (MST): Readings by Annie Wenstrup (Dena’ina), Vanessa Angélica Villarreal (Mexican American), and Marcie Rendon (White Earth Nation)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
Thursday, July 10 at 6:00 pm (MST): Readings by Bojan Louis (Diné), Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet Nation Citizen and Salish Descendant), and Jake Fournier—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
You may also like the following events from Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA):
- Next month, 7th July, 06:00 pm, 2025 MFACW July Evening Reading Series: Chip Livingston, Kelli Jo Ford, Michaela M.S. Redcherries in Santa Fe
- Next month, 8th July, 06:00 pm, 2025 MFACW July Evening Reading Series: Film Clips/Interview Featuring Billy Luther, Deborah Taffa in Santa Fe
- Next month, 9th July, 06:00 pm, 2025 MFACW July Evening Reading Series: Annie Wenstrup, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Marcie Rendon in Santa Fe
Also check out other
Arts events in Santa Fe,
Literary Art events in Santa Fe,
Fine Arts events in Santa Fe.
