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

Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Indigenous to Colombia) was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. It was a a winner of a California Book Award. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor’s choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. Rojas Contreras has received numerous awards and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, The Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. She is a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College. She lives in California.

Abby Chabitnoy (Aleutian) is the author of In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful (Wesleyan 2022), How to Dress a Fish (Wesleyan 2019), winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted in the international category of the 2020 Griffin Prize for Poetry, and the lino-cut illustrated chapbook Converging Lines of Light (Flower Press 2020). Abigail is a mentor for the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA in Creative Writing and an assistant professor at UMass Amherst. She is a Koniag descendant and member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak.

Bettye Keerse Born was born in Tucson, Arizona, and raised in Northern California, she holds a B.A. in Genetics from the University of California at Berkeley, a Ph.D. in Biology from New York University, and an M.D. from Case Western Reserve University. She and her husband have a daughter, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren. In 1990, she became the griotte of her family when her mother entrusted her with a box of family memorabilia, prompting her to write The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family, a work that took nearly thirty years of research and rewriting. The memoir, which blends personal family history with a broader tribute to African American contributions, explores the perseverance and strength of her ancestors, showing how enslaved Africans survived and contributed to America, passing those traits down through generations. A pediatrician in Boston, she provided care for children and supported parents, and she had rewarding experiences traveling to China for an international adoption agency and serving on the board of From Roots to Wings, an organization supporting grandparents raising grandchildren.

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).