The University of Arizona Press
Date: Thursday, April 9, 2026
Time: 7 p.m., CDT
Place: Madison Public Library – Central, 201 West Mifflin Street, Madison, WI
Register: online here
Kimberly Blaeser, author of Ancient Light, a National Book Foundation Science + Literature selected title, will read at the Madison Public Library. Blaeser collects poems that trace the many crises Indigenous communities navigate—from centuries of violence to the COVID-19 pandemic—alongside the ancestral knowledge that allows for a reclamation of language, of land, and of healing. Blaeser is a former Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po, Indigenous Nations Poets. Blaeser will join Sean Hill at the National Book Foundation’s event, “Science + Literature: The Science of Hope.” This event is free and open to the public, and registration can be found here.
About the book:
With vision and resilience, Kimberly Blaeser’s poetry layers together past, present, and futures. Against a backdrop of pandemic loss and injustice, MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), hidden graves at Native American boarding schools, and destructive environmental practices, Blaeser’s innovative poems trace pathways of kinship, healing, and renewal. They celebrate the solace of natural spaces through sense-laden geo-poetry and picto-poems. With an Anishinaabe sensibility, her words and images invoke an ancient belonging and voice the deep relatedness she experiences in her familiar watery regions of Minnesota.
