Joy Harjo

She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor.

She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms (after Robert Pinsky).

Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation (Este Mvskokvlke) and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground).

She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century.

Joy Harjo (born May 9, 1951) is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author.

Harjo was born on May 9, 1951, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Her father, Allen W. Foster, was an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee Nation.

Her mother was Wynema Baker Foster of Arkansas, who Harjo has identified as being of Irish, French, and Cherokee descent, and possibly of Chickasaw descent.

However, Harjo has stated that her mother and her maternal grandmother were not enrolled, despite her mother's self-identification as a Cherokee descendant.

Harjo is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee Nation.

Harjo's work is heavily inspired by the creativity of her mother, aunts, and grandmother, as well as her culture.

A major catalyst in her life was her parents' divorce.

Her first poem was written when she was in eighth grade.

At the age of 16, Harjo attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, which at the time was a BIA boarding school, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for high school.

Harjo loved painting and found that it gave her a way to express herself.

Harjo was inspired by her great-aunt, Lois Harjo Ball, who was a painter.

Harjo enrolled as a pre-med student the University of New Mexico.

She changed her major to art after her first year.

During her last year, she switched to creative writing, as she was inspired by different Native American writers.

The Native Americans that she was able to receive inspiration from are Simon J. Ortiz, and Leslie Marmon.

From the inspiration she received from the poet, it gave her the motivation on working on her first poetry while she was in college at the age of twenty-two.

While working many nights and days, she was able to publish her first book of nine poems called The Last Song in 1975 which is a year before she graduated in 1976.

She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

In addition to writing books and other publications, Harjo has taught in numerous United States universities, performed internationally at poetry readings and music events, and released seven albums of her original music.

Harjo is the author of ten books of poetry, and three children's books, The Good Luck Cat, For a Girl Becoming, and most recently, Remember (2023).

Her books include Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light (2022), Catching the Light (2022), Poet Warrior (2021), An American Sunrise (2019), Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), Crazy Brave (2012), and How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2002 (2004), among others.

She is the recipient of the 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, the 2023 Harper Lee Award, the 2023 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americans for the Arts, a 2022 Leadership Award from the Academy of American Poets, a 2019 Jackson Prize from Poets & Writers, the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, among other honors.

Harjo earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa in 1978.

She also took filmmaking classes at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Harjo taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts from 1978 to 1979 and 1983 to 1984.

She taught at Arizona State University from 1980 to 1981, the University of Colorado from 1985 to 1988, the University of Arizona from 1988 to 1990, the University of New Mexico from 1991 to 1997 and later from 2005 to 2010, UCLA in 1998 and from 2001 to 2005, University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast Low Residency MFA Program from 2011-2012, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 2013 to 2016, and University of Tennessee, Knoxville from 2016 to 2018.

Her students at the University of New Mexico included future Congresswoman and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.

Harjo has played alto saxophone with the band Poetic Justice, edited literary journals and anthologies, and written screenplays, plays, and children's books.

Harjo performs now with her saxophone and flutes, solo and with pulled-together players she often calls the Arrow Dynamics Band.

In 1995, Harjo received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.

In 2002, Harjo received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award for A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales . In 2008, she served as a founding member of the board of directors for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, for which she serves as a member of its National Advisory Council.

She has also been designated as the 14th Oklahoma Cultural Treasure at the 44th Oklahoma Governor's Arts Awards.

Harjo founded For Girls Becoming, an art mentorship program for young Mvskoke women and is a Founding Board Member and Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.

Her signature project as U.S. Poet Laureate was called Living Nations, Living Words: A Map of First Peoples Poetry; it focused on "mapping the U.S. with Native Nations poets and poems".

In 2019, she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and has since been inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, the National Women's Hall of Fame, and the Native American Hall of Fame.