The University of Arizona Press
Date: Friday, April 11, 2025
Time: 6:30 p.m., MST
Where: Museum of Northern Arizona, 31010 N. Fort Valley Road, Flagstaff, AZ
Celebrate poetry at the Northern Arizona Book Festival Featured Reading with Amber McCrary, author of Blue Corn Tongue: Poems in the Mouth of the Desert. She will read with authors m.s. RedCherries and Kinsale Drake. The Museum of Northern Arizona hosts the reading which is part of the four-day festival. The event is free and open to the public.
About the book:
In a voice that is jubilant, irreverent, sometimes scouring, sometimes heartfelt, and always unmistakably her own, Amber McCrary remaps the deserts of Arizona through the blue corn story of a young Diné woman figuring out love and life with an O’odham man. Reflecting experiences of Indigenous joy, pain, and family, these shapeshifting poems celebrate the love between two Native partners, a love that flourishes alongside the traumas they face in the present and the past. From her ethereal connection with her saguaro muse, Hosh, to the intricate tapestry of her relationships with Diné relatives and her awakening to the complex world of toxic masculinity, McCrary brings together DIY zine aesthetics, life forms of juniper and mountains, and the beauty of Diné Bizaad to tell of the enduring bonds between people and place.
