The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) presents readings by noted authors at 4 pm in the Library and Technology Center (LTC) on the IAIA campus. For questions regarding the MFA Library Readings, please contact IAIA Library Director Valerie Nye at (505) 424-2397 or vnye@iaia.edu. IAIA MFA Library Readings are free and open to the public.

Virginia Gaffney

Virginia Gaffney is a first year student in the MFA program in Creative Writing at IAIA. She has spent the last 25 years training and riding horses all the while continuing to improve upon her writing. Her recent manuscript portrays her experience working with a band of wild horses and the residents of a prison alternative ranch in northern New Mexico.

Monique Sanchez

Monique Sanchez (Cherokee and Isleta) is from Española, New Mexico. She is a candidate for an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Monique received her BS in Conservation Science from the College of Santa Fe and an MS in Crisis and Emergency Management from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her fiction has appeared in Trickster, published by Northern New Mexico College.

Rose B. Simpson

Rose B. Simpson was born in 1983 and raised in an arts and Permaculture environment at Santa Clara Pueblo, NM. She is a mixed-media artist focusing in ceramic sculpture, metal, fashion, painting, music, performance, installation, and most recently custom cars. She graduated high school Valedictorian from the Santa Fe Indian School and opted to attend the University of New Mexico with a focus in Studio Arts, Creative Writing, and Dance. In 2007, she graduated with a BFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2011 she graduated with an Honors MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. From 2012–2015 she attended Northern New Mexico College’s Automotive Science Program with a focus in Auto Body. She is currently enrolled in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ Low Residency Creative Writing MFA program.

Simpson has shown her work internationally, and is in museum collections nationally—including the Denver Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Clay Art Center, Heard Museum, Pomona College Museum of Art, and the Peabody Essex Museum.

Simpson currently is on the Board of Directors of Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute and the New Mexico School for the Arts. She is represented by Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art Gallery in Santa Fe. Residing on the Santa Clara reservation, she explores the many ways to deconstruct gender and culture based stereotypes and social ideologies by wandering between ceramic or fashion or drawing or music studios, working on her classic cars and motorcycle in her shop, or pulling weeds and feeding animals on the farm.