January 3-9, 2015 | Free Admission to nightly readings on the IAIA campus

SANTA FE, NM - The Institute of American Indian Arts’ (IAIA) Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing presents The Writers Festival -- January 3-9, 2015.  Readings by noted authors will take place each night beginning at 6 pm in the Auditorium -- located in the Library and Technology Center (LTC) on the IAIA campus -- 83 Avan Nu Po Road, minutes off of Richards Avenue on the south side of Santa Fe.

Some of the authors participating in The Writers Festival include:

Multi-award winning poet, novelist, and performer, Sherman Alexie has published 24 books including What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned; Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories; and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  Smoke Signals, the movie he wrote and co-produced, won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Alexie has been an urban Indian since 1994 and lives in Seattle with his family.  His reading closes the festival on January 9th.

 
Joy Harjo (Mvskoke-Creek), appearing January 8th, has published seven books of poetry, including How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the New Mexico Governor’s Award, the Rasmuson United States Artist Fellowship, and the William Carlos Williams Award. Her memoir Crazy Brave (W.W. Norton 2012), received the PEN USA Literary Award and an American Book Award. She performs with her saxophone, solo and with her band, the Arrow Dynamics, and has five CDʻs of music and poetry, including Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears.  A new poetry collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, is forthcoming from Norton.

Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) is an internationally recognized public speaker and writer of poetry, fiction, screenplays, and essays. Her books include Rounding the Human Corners, a Pulitzer nominee;  People of the Whale; Mean Spirit, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize;  Solar Storms;  and Power. Her poetry has received the Colorado Book Award, Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, an American Book Award, and a Lannan Fellowship.  Her most recent book is Dark. Sweet.: New & Selected Poems. Linda’s festival reading is on January 8th.

World-renowned author, Jess Walter joins the festival on January 9th.  His 2012 novel Beautiful Ruins spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list, five weeks at #1. He was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for The Zero and won the 2005 Edgar Allan Poe award for Citizen Vince.  His books have been published in 30 languages and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Harpers, McSweeney’s, Esquire, and elsewhere.  His most recent book is a collection of short stories, We Live in Water.

Claire Vaye Watkins is one of the authors opening the festival on January 3rd.  Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Tin House, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her collection of short stories, Battleborn, was named a best book of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, Flavorwire, and NPR.org. In addition to being a Guggenheim fellow, Claire is an assistant professor at Bucknell University and also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.

In addition to a slate of published authors, IAIA students will participate in the festival -- with Student Showcase Readings on January 6th and 8th.  For a full festival schedule, please visit the event page on Facebook by clicking here.

Jon Davis, Director of IAIA’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program, the producer of the event, remarked, "This is a dream lineup -- twenty writers, every one of whom can hit it out of the park."