Poets Across the Generations VI:Joy Harjo and J.M. Morea

Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Tribe. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writer?s Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has published five books of poetry including She Had Some Horse (Thucer Mouthe Press), The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (W.W. Norton & Co.), and The Spiral of Memory, a collection of interviews with Harjo from the University of Michigan Press Poets on Poets Series. She also completed the filmaking program at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Harjo was the narrator for ?The Native Americans? Series on TBS and more recently, ?Navajo Codetalkers? for National Geographic which won an Emmy. Harjo performs nationally and internationally solo, and ith her band, Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice for which she plays saxophone. Their first CD, ?Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century? was given an award for musical achievement from the First Americans in the Arts in 1998 and was a finalist in eight categories for the Native American Music Awards. Her literary awards include the Lila-Wallace Reader?s Digest fund Writer?s Award.

J.M. Morea?s first manuscript, Wish, was a semifinalist in the 1997 University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series and in the New Issues Poetry Press Series. A 1996 Pushcart Prize Nominee, her work has been published in several literary journals and has been featured on National Public Radio?s Chicago outlet WBEZ. She served as assistant editor of Dream in Yourself (Tia Chucha Press) a collection of works from Gallery 37 students and is a resident/artist at Cholmers Elementary School.