The day of Saturday Festivities closes with a reading from Jake Skeets and Dr. Laura Tohe.
Jake Skeets is Black Streak Wood, born Water’s Edge. He is Diné and holds an MFA in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Waxwing, Yellow Medicine Review, and elsewhere. Jake is a winner of the 2018 “Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize. His community work includes organizing Pollentongue, a poetry salon and reading series, and acting as a faculty mentor for the annual Emerging Diné Writers’ Institute. He is the founding editor of Cloudthroat, an online publication for Native, First Nations, and Indigenous writing and art, and a founding member of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́: a Diné Writers’ Collective. He currently teaches at Diné College in the Navajo Nation. His first collection, Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, was selected as a winner for the 2018 National Poetry Series by Kathy Fagan for Milkweed Editions.
Laura Tohe is Tsénahabiłnii born for the Tódich’inii. She grew up at Crystal, New Mexico near the Chuska Mountains on the Diné homeland. Her published books include Making Friends with Water (chapbook); No Parole Today, a book on boarding schools; Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community, co-edited with Heid Erdrich; Tseyí: Deep in the Rock, in collaboration with photographer, Stephen Strom; and Code Talker Stories, an oral history book with the remaining Navajo Code Talkers. The Phoenix Symphony commissioned her to write the libretto for Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio, which made its 2008 world premiere as part of the Phoenix Symphony’s 60th anniversary. A compact disc recording of Enemy Slayer is on the Naxos classical music label. It received rave reviews by the Arizona Republic and was called “a triumph” by Opera Today. In 2015, Tohe was honored as the Navajo Nation Poet Laureate for 2015-2017, a title given to her in celebration and recognition of her work as a poet and writer.
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