The University of Arizona Press

February 2, 2021

We are thrilled to announce that Spiral to the Stars by Laura Harjo is the winner of the 2020 Beatrice Medicine Award for Best Published Monograph! Chosen by the members of the Native American Literature Symposium and the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures boards, this award highlights exceptional work published in the field of Indigenous studies in the year 2019.

“This country’s first philosophers, poets, artists, and knowledge keepers were Indigenous peoples. The Mvskoke were a major cultural force in the southeast. Laura Harjo’s Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity marks a continuation of the development of our cultural knowledge. Community defines us, and we do not go forward together without the revisioning of all elements that make a living culture. Each generation makes a concentric circle that leans outward into the deepest star knowledges even as it leans inward toward the roots of earth knowledge. We are still here within the shape of this cultural geography. We keep moving forward with the tools Harjo has illuminated here. Mvto.”—Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), U.S. Poet Laureate

Congratulations, Laura!