Luci Tapahonso Reads at the University of Arizona

When: Thursday, February 9th at 7:00 P.M. MST

Where: University of Arizona Campus, Harvill Building, Room 150

Luci Tapahonso, the first poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, will join us on the University of Arizona campus for a reading from her collection A Radiant Curve. Join us for an evening of poetry with Luci!

This reading is part of the American Indian Studies department’s Jack and Nancy Warneke AIS Speaker Series.

Learn more about the University of Arizona’s American Indian Studies program here.

Luci Tapahonso is an award-winning Diné poet and a professor emerita of creative writing at the University of New Mexico. In A Radiant Curve, Luci’s words draw us into a workaday world that, magically but never surprisingly, has room for the Diyin Dine’é (the Holy People), Old Salt Woman, and Dawn Boy. When she describes her grandson’s First Laugh Ceremony—explaining that it was originally performed for White Shell Girl, who grew up to be Changing Woman—her account enriches us and we long to hear more. Tapahonso weaves the Navajo language into her work like she weaves “the first four rows of black yarn” into a rug she is making “for my little grandson, who inherited my father’s name: Hastiin Tsétah Naaki Bísóí.” As readers, we find that we too are surrounded by silent comfort, held lovingly in the confident hands of an accomplished writer who has a great deal to tell us about life.