Fiction writer, playwright, and journalist Sheila Heti and 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate, memoirist and musician Joy Harjo read from their work as part of the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series.
The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing celebrates 80 years during the 2019-20 academic year with readings by 80 writers.
Photo by Steph Martyniuk
SHEILA HETI is the author of eight books, including most recently the novel Motherhood, and the 2012 novel, How Should a Person Be? which was a New York Times Notable Book and was called by Time magazine “one of the most talked-about books of the year.” She is co-editor of the New York Times bestseller Women in Clothes, which features the voices of 639 women from around the world. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages.
Her play, All Our Happy Days are Stupid, had sold-outs run at The Kitchen in New York and Videofag in Toronto. She appeared as Lenore Doolan in Leanne Shapton’s book Important Artifacts, and she performed in Margaux Williamson’s movie, Teenager Hamlet.
Heti is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine and has conducted many long-form interviews with writers and artists. She has lectured at MoMA, The New Yorker Festival, Columbia University, Brown University, the Hammer Museum, the Cúirt Festival, the Sydney Writers Festival, and many other places. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Harper’s, The New York Times, n+1, and The London Review of Books. She lives in Toronto.
Photo by Matika Wilbur
JOY HARJO was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Her seven books of poetry, which include such well-known titles as How We Became Human — New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses, have garnered many awards. These include the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas; and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Harjo has also released four award-winning CD’s of original music and in 2009 won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year for Winding Through the Milky Way. She has received a Rasmusson US Artists Fellowship and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Harjo writes a column entitled “Comings and Goings” for her tribal newspaper, the Muscogee Nation News. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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