Sherwin Bitsui, a Diné (Navajo) from the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, of the Bįį’tóó’nii’ Tódi’chii’nii clan and born for the Tlizilłani’ clan, received an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program. He is the author of the poetry collections Dissolve (2018), Flood Song (2009), and Shapeshift (2003).
Steeped in Native American culture, mythology, and history, Bitsui’s poems reveal the tensions in the intersection of Native American and contemporary urban culture. His poems are imagistic, surreal, and rich with details of the landscape of the Southwest. Flood Song is a book-length lyric sequence that explores the traditions of Native American writing through postmodern fragment and stream of consciousness.
Bitsui has received a Whiting Writers’ Award, a grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, a Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He teaches at Northern Arizona University.
Poet Orlando White is from Tólikan, Arizona. He is Diné of the Naaneesht’ézhi Tábaahí and born for the Naakai Diné’e. White earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Brown University. He is the author of LETTERRS (2015) and Bone Light (2009), a collection of poems Kazim Ali described as a “careful excavation on language and letters and the physical body.” White’s work has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. The recipient of a residency from the Lannan Foundation, White teaches at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona, and in the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
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