Join the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) from Sunday, January 5 through Wednesday, January 8, 2025, as the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFACW) program presents an Evening Reading Series featuring program mentors and special guests. Each evening will engage its audience with poetry, memoir, or fiction from some of today’s most vibrant and vital writers. These events will be held both in-person and virtually via livestream.

Evening Reading Series Events

• Sunday, January 5, 6:00 pm (MST): Readings by James Thomas Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk), Toni Jensen (Métis), and Chen Chen—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Monday, January 6, 6:00 pm (MST): Readings by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Indigenous to Colombia), Abby Chabitnoy (Aleutian), and Bettye Keerse—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Tuesday, January 7, 6:00 pm (MST): Readings by Debra Magpie Earling (Bitterroot Salish), Kelli Jo Ford (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), and Brittney Means—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Wednesday, January 8, 6:00 pm (MST): Readings by Pam Houston, Geoff Harris, and Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe) ’09—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus

Bios

Debra Magpie Earling (Bitterroot Salish) was born in Spokane, Washington. She received her BA from the University of Washington in Seattle and her MA and MFA in Fiction from Cornell University. From 1991 to 1998, Earling held positions in both Native American Studies and Creative Writing at the University of Montana in Missoula. Currently, she is an associate professor in the English Department there and teaches Fiction and Native American Studies. Earling’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, Northeast Indian Quarterly, and many anthologies including Song of the Turtle (Old World/Ballantine); Contemporary Short Stories Celebrating Women; Circle of Women (Red River Books); Talking Leaves: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Short Stories (Delta). Perma Red (Blue Hen Books 2002) is her first novel. It received the Western Writers Association Spur Award for Best Novel of the West in 2003, the Mountain and Plains Bookseller Association Award, WWA’s Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for Best First Novel, a WILLA Literary Award, and the American Book Award. It is a Montana Book Award Honor Book and was chosen by Barnes & Noble as part of its Discover Great New Writers series.

Kelli Jo Ford (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her debut novel-in-stories Crooked Hallelujah was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, The Story Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, The Dublin Literary Award, and The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. She is the recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize, a Native Arts & Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and a Dobie Paisano Fellowship. She teaches writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Brittney Meansis a Chicana writer and editor living in Albuquerque, NM. A graduate of Iowa’s MFA Nonfiction Writing Program, Means has worked with Inara Verzemnieks and Kiese Laymon. She has received several awards for her work, including the Magdalena Award, the Geneva Fellowship, the Grace Paley Fellowship, and the Herodotus Award.

MFA in Creative Writing

The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is designed as a two-year program with two intensive week-long residencies per year (summer and winter) at IAIA. Students and faculty mentors gather for a week of workshops, lectures, and readings. At the end of the residency week, each student is matched with a faculty mentor, who then works one-on-one with the student for the semester. IAIA’s program is unique in that we emphasize the importance of Indigenous writers speaking to the Indigenous experience. The literature we read carries a distinct Native American and First Nations emphasis. The MAFCW offers four areas of emphasis: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting.

The deadline to apply for the 2025 academic year is Feb. 1 by 5 pm (MST).