Poetry

Contributors

Debon Redd Victor

My name is Debon Redd Victor, I prefer Redd but at the same it doesn’t matter. I started writing in high school in my junior year. I remember the books I read back then that made me want to write. The Alchemist is one of those books, I remember spending class hours and even times at home just reading the book. I don’t know how I came upon the book, just that one day it found itself into my hands. I can really only write during class time, whether it to deal with boredom or it is the only time I feel like I need to write, I don’t know. Anyways, now I feel like I can create any world, or at least set up the world for something greater. The only problem is getting to that greater status and going beyond the set up. I think for now though I’ll continue to set up stories until I can find that spark again to dive deep into a story.

Rebekkah Autaubo

Rebekkah Autaubo is a tribal member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. She is a life-long poet and a fan of Patti Smith. Rebekkah appreciates people who do not shy away from calling things out for what they are. She is a creative writing major at the Institute of American Indian Arts. However, Rebekkah plans to further her education at a different university – eventually establishing herself among other published poets. She uses her experiences as a Native American woman as an influence to tell her story through poetry and other writings. Rebekkah comes from a family of talented, devoted, and inspirational people – especially her father, who has always encouraged her writings and artistic pursuits.

Vivian Carroll

Vivian Carroll (Cherokee Nation) is an MFA candidate in IAIA’s Creative Writing Program. She recently won the 2020 Tribal College Journal’s Student Edition Top Entry in Poetry, with Tommy Orange serving as guest editor. She is forever grateful to have written a winning essay that allowed her to be a part of IAIA’s contingent to Washington D.C. to attend the Suzan Shown Harjo Symposium at the Smithsonian Nation Museum of the American Indian, and to be present at the Library of Congress to hear the inaugural reading of U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo. She thanks the student editors of IAIA’s anthology from 2016 to the present day for permitting her work to speak from the anthologies’ pages.

Nika Feldman

Nika Feldman is an interdisciplinary textile artist currently completing a degree in Indigenous Liberal Studies at IAIA. Feldman was born and grew up in the Northeast as a dual citizen between the US and Canada on the unceded territory of the Piquawket and the Mi’kmaq. As a descendant of both a settler-colonial population and an immigrant population, Feldman’s maternal ancestry consists of French, English, Scottish, and Irish, while her paternal ancestry is that of Eastern European Jews. However, more pertinent to the forming of Feldman’s identity was her immediate parental influences incorporating artistic ways of being and anti-establishment ideology.

Teklu Hogan

teklu is crow/frog clan.

Fidel Estevanio Frank

“Diné Nishłį́. Kinya'áanii nishłį́, Tódích’íi’nii báshíshchiin, Tábąąhá dashíchei, Tł’ááshchí’í dashínáłí.” Fidel is Diné. His clan is Towering House clan. He is born for Bitter Water. His maternal grandfather’s clan is Water’s Edge and paternal grandfather is Red Bottom People. He founded a community group called Diné Introspective in 2016 while being the first member to complete his time at Shiprock AmeriCorps. He has been volunteering at the Healing Circle Drop-In Center (located also in Shiprock) since 2013. He helps with community events like Restoring and Celebrating Family Wellness when he is not in school or paying for bills. He is an advocate using multimedia artforms for mental health issues, LGBTQ, eating disorders, and preserving Diné k’éjí. He is the photographer for Łizhin/Łigai Photography. His photography was featured in Narrative Witness 2016 (international art exchange of Native Peoples in United States and Australia). Fidel learns from k’é: family and friends.

Paige Hannan

Paige Hannan is a Shinnecock Native from humid and green Long Island. They are a creative writer in the undergrad program at IAIA. Their pieces tend to focus on themes of romance, survival, and adventure. Previously published in earlier anthologies, their work returns to the latest publication under "the things we carry" with the two poetry pieces "11:17" and "Gardens Ghosts and Gods oh my" and their latest fiction work "Closure at the Blue Cat". In these pieces the readers can find that the speakers and characters are carrying things like trauma, fear, and love, and how it affects them.

Debbie Haddow

Debbie Haddow is a Thai lesbian poet and storyteller residing in Santa Fe. She graduated with her BFA in Creative Writing from IAIA in 2019 and is set to graduate from IAIA’s MFA program over the summer after working towards a degree in Poetry. Writing is her greatest passion in life. She draws inspiration from her emotions and struggles with mental illness, seeking to create something beautiful out of the life she’s lived thus far. Her words define her. Her spirit is in everything she sets to page.

Tovah Strong

Tovah Strong is from a small train town in New Mexico. A senior at the Institute of American Indian Arts, she is studying creative writing with an emphasis in poetry. She also writes prose. Her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, the Tribal College Journal, Searchlight New Mexico, and others. She cherishes research rabbit holes and watches ravens whenever possible.

Dyusa Chapiro

Hi, my name is Dyusa and I am a Chachi and Jewish artist. I wrote this poem while feeling complete hopelessness after processing the current health of my family back in Ecuador. It has been over a decade since I've last seen them and it is a terrifying feeling. Somehow, in between the first few lines of this poem and the last, a powerful and hopeful energy came over me and created this piece. May these words inspire hope through life's storms and into the stars of bright and beautiful Indigenous futures.

Debbie Haddow

Debbie Haddow is a Thai lesbian author and poet in her first year of IAIA’s MFA program, an enthusiastic nerd by nature. In 2019, she graduated from IAIA with her BFA in Creative Writing.  She writes in many genres, but her favorite is fantasy, her inspiration drawn from the magical and mythological. Writing is what inspires her to keep living, to capture the beauty in every situation and to speak for the struggles with mental illness that she and many others face. She has been published in IAIA’s 2018 and 2019 anthologies, Chrysalism and Celestial Refractions, as well as The Santa Fe Literary Review, Haiku Journal and The Tribal College Journal–Student website as an honorable mention in its 2020 Student Writing Competition.

Annabella Farmer

Annabella Farmer is a senior in the Creative Writing department at the Institute of American Indian Arts, specializing in fiction and journalism. She is a graduate of the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, and has been published in the Santa Fe Literary Review, the Santa Fe Reporter, the Moon, and the Santa Fe New Mexican. She gleefully transferred to IAIA from St. John's College in 2019, and is enjoying experiments in poetry and speculative short fiction.

Karen Vargas

Karen Vargas is a native of northern New Mexico. Her poetry and short stories have been published in Borderlore, Epoch, Catamaran, Drinking from the Stream, La Palabra: The Word Is A Woman series, and others. She is the recipient of a Taos Resident Writers Award and a Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation Residency.

Chachee Valentine

Chachee Valentine’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Stolen Island Review, Lullwater Review, Fugue, P’an Ku, In-Site Magazine, Words & Images, Alchemy, Prairie Margins, Askew, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Eunoia Review, The Parliament Literary Journal and 11 Mag Berlin. Chachee was one of seventeen finalists for the Rita Dove Poetry award in Salem, NC, placed second at Emory University’s Lullwater Review Prize for Poetry, was the recipient of the Rosemary Cox Poetry Award at Georgia State University and her short story, Prick, was a quarterfinalist for Screencraft 2021. Chachee lives in Santa Fe, NM and is majoring at IAIA in Creative Writing.

Fidel Frank

Fidel is a student that majors in Indigenous Liberal Studies at IAIA. His poetry involves Diné k’ejí (Diné language) and understanding multiple worldviews. The topics he writes about are anorexia recovery and relapse, Two-Spirit understandings, his ultimate biases (Bangchan, Ungjae, Namjoon, Jungwoo, and Raehwan), Diné language, and memories.

Delaney Keshena

Delaney Keshena is from a small, train-bound border town and enrolled Menominee. They’re a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts where they study ceramics and poetry

Ibe Liebenberg

Ibe Liebenberg lives in Chico, California, and works as a firefighter for Cal Fire and as a lecturer at Chico State University. He is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. He is currently enrolled in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He has been published in The Journal of Chickasaw History and Culture, Chico State Universities Multicultural Echoes Literary Magazine, and The ThreePenny Review.

Delaney Keshena

Delaney Keshena is an enrolled citizen of the Menominee Nation based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They’re pursuing a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, focusing their studies in poetry and ceramics.

teklu

teklu is crow/frog clan.

KamiJo Karmell Whiteclay

My name is KamiJo Whiteclay, I am a proud member of the Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation located in South Eastern Montana. I am currently I am a first year student at IAIA studying in the Indigenous Liberal Studies Department. I write poetry as a way to communicate the complex thoughts and feelings within myself. My written prose and poetry is inspired by growth, healing, women-empowerment, and traditional Apsaalooke values.