about the author

Joy Harjo is a poet and musician from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. After growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo attended the Institute of American Indian Arts and the University of New Mexico, where she began composing poetry. Harjo has held various positions at universities across Turtle Island, teaching American Indian studies, writing, and English. She is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years, An American Sunrise, and In Mad Love and War. In addition to poetry, she has written memoirs, children’s literature, and music. Her band, the Arrow Dynamics Band, has released seven critically acclaimed albums. Harjo is a three-term National Poet Laureate, and the winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts, and the American Book Award. She serves as the current Artist-in-Residence at Tulsa’s Bob Dylan Center and Chair of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.