The Tenth Annual Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest featuring US Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo  will take place on Tuesday, October 5, 2021 at 7 pm in the Albuquerque Journal Theatre at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) at 1701 4th Street SW in Albuquerque.

This event is free and open to the public, but NHCC requests that audience members reserve a ticket ahead of time here: https://my.nmculture.org/30/2459

 Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa and is an award-winning writer, performer, and saxophone player of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. Her numerous publications include nine books of poetry, a memoir, a young adult novel, a children’s book, and five CDs featuring her poetry and music. Harjo will release her sixth CD, I Pray for My Enemies, on May 5, 2021. In 2019, Harjo was named the twenty-third US Poet Laureate, the nation’s first Native American poet to receive such an honor. Harjo was reappointed to a second term on April 30, 2020, and a third term on Nov. 19, 2020.

Her other prestigious awards include the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, a PEN US Literary Award for Nonfiction, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Harjo is Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, Chair of the Board of Directors for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and currently holds a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. We are thrilled to host and welcome back our prestigious speaker, US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, who graduated with a BA in English from UNM, where Mr. Anaya taught for nearly two decades. The tenth annual lecture is the first since Mr. Anaya’s passing in 2020. We will honor Mr. Anaya with Harjo’s lecture, a homecoming for a lobo alumna and a fitting tribute to Mr. Anaya’s legacy at UNM and in the English Department.

In 2010, Mr. Anaya established the lecture series through a generous gift to the English Department. A renowned fiction writer, founder of UNM’s distinguished Creative Writing Program, and former instructor of Joy Harjo, Mr. Anaya is also an Emeritus Professor of English at UNM. His papers are held at UNM’s Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections and are now available online through the Rudolfo Anaya Digital Archive: https://anaya.unm.edu/