A reading to celebrate the new collaboration between CalArts Creative Writing Program and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe: with Deborah Jackson Taffa and dg nanouk okpik.
Praise for Deborah Taffa: “Taffa never shies away from pain, or from the complexities of family, but her story always insists on joy, and explores with such lucidity the endless transformations, innovations, and acts of creation that survival requires. Taffa’s Laguna grandmother said three things were necessary for a deep intimacy with homeland—sensory experiences, storied histories, and deep caring—and all three strands are so abundantly, ecstatically, present in this stunning saga of inheritance and reckoning.” Leslie Jamison, author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams.
Praise for dg nanouk okpik: (Pulitzer Prize finalist for Blood Snow, American Book award winner for Corpse Whale) “dg nanouk okpik’s visionary pastorals mourn the melt, illness, and loss occasioned by the Anthropocene, while at the same time thrumming with mystical insight and heart-stopping beauty…Temporalities and subjectivities meld together. The living wait for the dead; the first person and third person become simultaneous.” Claire Marie Stancek, Center for Literary Publishing.