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

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.

Geoff Harris worked as Vice-President of Story and Writer Development at NBC, prior to becoming a professional TV writer and teacher, where he oversaw the Story Department and developed prime-time TV shows in all formats, from comedies and dramas to movies and mini-series. In addition, he discovered and placed talented new writers from around the US. As a writer, Harris creates and develops TV shows and has pitched and sold his series to various production companies and networks. He also uses his storytelling talent and industry experience to mentor the next generation of writers. He runs intensive story-incubation labs that prepare diverse writers for the rigors of working on a TV series. Under his tutelage, more than 45 writers have been staffed on series across all platforms—network, cable, premium cable, and streaming. Geoff holds two master’s degrees, one from Columbia University and the other from University of Notre Dame, and an undergraduate degree from St. Johns College.

Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe) is a poet, IAIA alum, and mentor in the MFACW program. She is the author of the poetry collections Chromosomory and WHEREAS. Her work has appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, and BOMB. She has received many awards, including the NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK.

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).