Join the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) from Monday, January 8 through Friday, January 12, 2024, 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.

Evening Reading Series Events

• (Canceled) Monday, January 8, 6:30 pm (MST): Readings by Carribean Fragoza, Brian Evenson, and Janet Sarbanes from CalArts—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Tuesday, January 9, 6:30 pm (MST): Readings by dg okpik (Iñupiaq-Inuit), Kelli Jo Ford (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), Jennifer Foerster (Muscogee [Creek] Nation of Oklahoma)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Wednesday, January 10, 6:30 pm (MST): Readings by Pam Houston, Raquel Gutierrez, Bojan Louis (Diné)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Thursday, January 11, 6:30 pm (MST): Readings by Leslie Jamison, Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota), Mona Susan Power (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Friday, January 12, 4:30–6 pm (MST): Reading and Q&A with Kim Blaeser (White Earth Nation) and Deborah Taffa (Quechan [Yuma] Nation and Laguna Pueblo)—IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA)

Bios

Pam Houston is a mentor in the MFACW program and the author of the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, as well as two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, all published by W.W. Norton. Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Century, among other anthologies. She won the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award, and several teaching awards. In addition to teaching in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Houston is Professor of English at UC Davis and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers, which puts on between seven and ten writers’ gatherings per year in places as diverse as Boulder, Colorado, Tomales Bay, California, and Chamonix, France.

Raquel Gutiérrez is an arts critic, writer, poet, educator, and mentor in the MFACW program. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Gutiérrez credits the queer and feminist DIY post-punk ‘zine culture of the 1990s plus Los Angeles County and Getty paid arts internships with introducing her/them to the various vibrant art and music scenes and communities throughout Southern California. Gutiérrez is a 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism and a 2017 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Gutiérrez’s first book, Brown Neon (Coffee House Press), was named one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker.

Bojan Louis (Diné) is a poet, essayist, short story writer, and mentor in the MFACW program. He is the author of the short-story collection Sinking Bell, the poetry collection Currents, and the nonfiction chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona. His work can be found in Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers; When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry; and The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature. Louis has received a MacDowell Fellowship and a 2018 American Book 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 2024 academic year is Feb. 1 by 5 pm (MST).