The University of Arizona Press
When: Tuesday, July 18, 5 p.m.
Where: Loft Cinema 3233 E Speedway Blvd., Tucson
Sponsored by the University of Arizona Poetry Center, the Summer Social will feature six short films, created by Arizona Public Media’s “Arizona Illustrated.” The event is free and open to the public. Each film focuses on a single poem chosen as an evocation of Southern Arizona, in all its beauty and complexity. The featured Tucson poets include TC Tolbert, Raquel Gutiérrez, William Pitt Root, Susan Briante, Javier Zamora, and Bojan Louis.
Bojan Louis is a contributor to The Diné Reader, An Anthology of Navajo Literature. He is Naakai Dine’é and born for ‘Áshįįhí; his maternal grandfather is Ta’neeszahnii and his paternal grandfather is Bilagáana. He was born in Gallup, New Mexico, and grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. Louis was the inaugural Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence at Arizona State University and in fall 2019 became an assistant professor of English and American Indian studies at the University of Arizona. He is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist.
The Diné Reader is unprecedented. It showcases the breadth, depth, and diversity of Diné creative artists and their poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose.This wide-ranging anthology brings together writers who offer perspectives that span generations and perspectives on life and Diné history. The collected works display a rich variety of and creativity in themes: home and history; contemporary concerns about identity, historical trauma, and loss of language; and economic and environmental inequalities.
The Diné Reader developed as a way to demonstrate both the power of Diné literary artistry and the persistence of the Navajo people.
