Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. In 2025, he was named the 25th poet laureate of the United States. He is the author of 12 books of poetry, including Into the Hush (2025),  The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (2025), and Sight Lines (2019), for which he won the National Book Award. A chancellor emeritus at the Academy of American Poets and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Sze has taught at Stanford University and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), where he is a professor emeritus. He was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, where he lives with his wife, the poet Carol Moldaw.

Sherwin Bitsui is the author of three collections of poetry: Dissolve, Flood Song, and Shapeshift. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, an American Book Award, and the PEN Book Award. His poems have appeared in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT, and elsewhere. He is Diné of the Todích’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizílaaní (Many Goats Clan), and has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the Native Arts & Culture Foundation.tion goes here

dg nanouk okpik is an Iñupiaq poet. A graduate of Salish Kootenai College, The Institute of American Indian Arts and Stonecoast College, her first book, Corpse Whale, received the American Book Award and her follow-up, Blood Snow, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. okpik lives and writes in New Mexico.

Jake Skeets is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, and Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Horses, forthcoming, was named one of Literary Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026. His honors include a Whiting Award, a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship and he was the 2023-2024 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. He is currently serving as the third Navajo Nation Poet Laureate and teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Dr. Heather Cahoon is the author of the Horsefly Dress and Elk Thirst, which won the Merriam-Frontier Prize. Her poems have been published in The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, LitHub, and the landmark anthology When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through. Cahoon has received support for her writing from the Montana Arts Council, Mellon Foundation and Potlatch Fund. She formerly directed the American Indian Governance and Policy Institute and currently serves as Associate Professor and Chair of Native American Studies at the University of Montana. She is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of more than thirty-five novels and collections, along with novellas and comic books. Most recent are The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and Killer on the Road. His next novel, Off the Reservation, will be published in 202*. Stephen lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado.

Kyle Edwards is an award-winning novelist and journalist. His debut novel, Small Ceremonies, won Canada’s 2025 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and was nominated for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award. Kyle grew up on the Lake Manitoba First Nation. He is a member of The New Yorker's editorial staff. 

Jon Hickey’s debut novel Big Chief was listed by the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times as a most anticipated book of 2025. He earned an MFA from Cornell University and later was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His short stories have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast and the Massachusetts Review among other journals. Originally from Minnesota and Wisconsin, he is a citizen of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons.

Mariah Rigg is the author of the short story collection Extinction Capital of the World, winner of the 2026 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature and the hybrid chapbook All Hat, No Cattle. Her work has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Oregon Literary Arts, and Lambda Literary among others. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A Samoan-Haole, she was born and raised on the island of O‘ahu.

Elissa Washuta's essay collection White Magic was selected as a finalist for the PEN/Open Book Award and long-listed for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. She is the author of My Body Is a Book of Rules and Starvation Mode, and co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. Elissa’s honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Creative Capital award. She is a professor of creative writing at The Ohio State University. Her experimental business memoir, The Big Score, is forthcoming from Washington Square Press. She is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe.

Byron Aspaas is Diné. He is Táchii’nii, born for Tódich’iinii and raised within the four sacred mountains of Dinétah. Byron received his BFA and MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in creative writing. His work can be found in Denver Quarterly, Santa Fe Noir, Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers and The Diné Reader. He works as poetry mentor for Western Colorado University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing. He lives with his partner, six dogs, and four cats.

Terran Last Gun is an enrolled Piikani (Blackfeet) citizen and visual artist based in Santa Fe. His work centers around the process of color exploration and visual documentation of nature, cosmos, cultural narratives, and personal experiences. He has exhibited at venues including the SITE Santa Fe, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Newberry Library, Contemporary at Blue Star and the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Last Gun holds a BFA in Museum Studies and AFA in Studio Arts from IAIA. He has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, First Peoples Fund and the Santa Fe Art Institute.

 April D. Youpee-Roll is an advocate for Tribal sovereignty and has represented Tribes, national Native organizations, and professors and scholars of Federal Indian Law in state and federal appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. She formerly clerked on the United States District Court for the District of Montana, on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and worked as a federal prosecutor in California. She currently serves as Associate General Counsel for the Directors Guild of America.

Monte Mills is the Charles I. Stone Professor of Law and the Director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington. He is the co-author of American Indian Law, Cases and Commentary and Native American Natural Resources Law and A Third Way: Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection. Monte was Co-Director of the Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana. He also served as the Director of the Legal Department for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in Colorado.