2021 Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence
The MFA Creative Writing Program is thrilled to welcome poet, playwright and musician Joy Harjo as the 2021 Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence. Her interdisciplinary, collaborative spirit, and commitment to mentorship and empowerment strongly resonates with the kinds of creativity, activism and care our program engages and encourages. Please join us for the first of Joy Harjo's presentations, a conversation on craft.
Joy Harjo, the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, is a member of the Mvskoke Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground). She is only the second poet to be appointed a third term as U.S. Poet Laureate.
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she left home to attend high school at the innovative Institute of American Indian Arts, which was then a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry, including her most recent, the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise (2019), which was a 2020 Oklahoma Book Award Winner. Her first memoir, Crazy Brave, was awarded the PEN USA Literary Award in Creative Non Fiction and the American Book Award, and her second, Poet Warrior: A Call for Love and Justice, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in Fall 2021
About the Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence Program
The Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence Program was created in memory of our late alum. With this program, we encourage and celebrate the foresight and engagement with the innovative writing arts community that Ms. Jacobson was known for. Each year, the Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence Program brings a prestigious writer to the CalArts campus for a public lecture, a classroom visits, and individual meetings with MFA Creative Writing students, and, in partnership with REDCAT, presents a reading by the Writer in Residence to a wider Los Angeles audience.
Photo: Paul Abdoo
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