Who: Institute of American Indian Arts
What: American Indian writers Heid Erdrich and Eric Gansworth
When: Tuesday, April 14, 4:00 p.m., and Thursday, April 16, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Lucky Bean Coffee Shop (55 Canada del Rancho in the Rancho Viejo neighborhood) and a poetry reading Thursday, April 16, 7:00 p.m. in the Library and Technology Center Auditorium on the IAIA Campus (83 Avan Nu Po Road) in Santa Fe.
Contact:www.iaia.edu (505) 424-2365,

acclaimed American Indian writers Heid Erdrich and Eric Gansworth will be coming to IAIA in April. The public is invited to a question and answer session with both writers on Tuesday, April 14, 4:00 p.m. at the Lucky Bean Coffee Shop (55 Canada del Rancho in the Rancho Viejo neighborhood) and a poetry reading Thursday, April 16, 7:00 p.m. in the Library and Technology Center Auditorium on the IAIA Campus (83 Avan Nu Po Road). Both events are free of charge.

Heid Erdrich has authored three poetry collections including National Monuments (Michigan State University Press) and the recently re-issued Fishing for Myth from New Rivers Press. She also authored The Mother’s Tongue (Salt Publishing’s Earthworks series) and co-edited Sister Nations: Native American Women on Community (Minnesota Historical Society Press). Erdrich has been the recipient of numerous awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, The Loft Literary Center and the Archibald Bush Foundation. She is a three-time nominee for the Minnesota Book Award. A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibway, Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. She earned degrees from Dartmouth College and Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She and her sister, Louise Erdrich, recently co-founded Birchbark House, a non-profit clearinghouse for Indigenous language-centered literature.

Eric Gansworth, an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation, was born and raised at the Tuscarora Indian Nation in western New York. He is a Professor of English and Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York and received both a bachelor and a master of arts degree in English from Buffalo State College. Gansworth began his creative work as a visual artist, eventually expanding to narrative as a way of furthering the storytelling he had already developed as a painter. His books, including Indian Summers (Michigan State University Press), Smoke Dancing (MSUP), Mending Skins (University of Nebraska Press), Nickel Eclipse (MSUP), Iroquois Moon (MSUP), A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function (Syracuse University Press) and Breathing the Monster Alive (Bright Hill) all feature paintings as integral parts of their story lines. Gansworth has received many awards including a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Award in 2006 for his novel, Mending Skins.

www.iaia.edu.For more information about this reading, please contact IAIA creative writing faculty, Jon Davis at (505) 424-2365. For more information about the Institute of American Indian Arts, please visit

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