Join us for a special evening of poetry, conversation, and community at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) as we celebrate the launch of “We” by Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota) ’09, recently named a 2026 MacArthur Fellow. https://iaia.edu/iaia-alum-layli-long-soldier-named-a-2026-macarthur-fellow/The evening’s highlights include a poetry reading by Layli Long Soldier, followed by a conversation with James Thomas Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk) ’90. A book signing will follow the program.
About “We”
In “We,” Layli Long Soldier examines what it means to be in community, to be in relation with family, nation, history, and language. We is the first-person plural, the pronoun of inclusion in English. It is also Wé, the Lakota word meaning “blood”—what is shared and what is shed.
This ingenious and insightful arrangement of poems, lyric essays, and full-color visual artwork creates a unique space for readers of collaboration, mentorship, and shared knowledge. The 184 X’s signed to a broken treaty, the fringes of a winged dress braided in honor of children lost to Indian boarding schools, and intricate Lakota star quilts become shapes and patterns that convey collective kinship, memory, and grievance. “From this day forward,” Long Soldier writes, “I declare a war of language.”
We is a visionary new collection by a writer and artist whose unfolding works are among the most groundbreaking of our time.
About Layli Long Soldier
Layli Long Soldier holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. Most recently, she was awarded the 2025 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010), WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017), and WE (Graywolf Press, 2026). She teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
About James Thomas Stevens
James Thomas Stevens (Aronhió:ta’s [Akwesasne Mohawk]) was born in Niagara Falls, New York, in 1966 and grew up between Six Nations Reserve in Ontario (the birthplace of his grandfather), the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation in upstate New York (birthplace of his grandmother), and the Tuscarora Reservation in western New York (where his grandparents settled). He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Brown University’s graduate C.W. program. Stevens is the author of eight books of poetry, including Combing the Snakes from His Hair, Mohawk/Samoa: Transmigrations, A Bridge Dead in the Water, The Mutual Life, Bulle/Chimere, and DisOrient, and he has recently finished a new manuscript, The Golden Book. He is a 2000 Whiting Award recipient and teaches in IAIA’s undergraduate and graduate Creative Writing Programs. He teaches Poetry, Creative nonfiction, Native American literature, and literary world survey courses.
This event is free and open to the public, with no RSVP required. Please contact [email protected] with any questions.
https://iaia.edu/event/layli-long-soldier-we-literary-event/
Event venue
83 Avan Nu Po Road, Santa Fe, NM, United States, New Mexico 87508
Tickets
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