Please enjoy the latest work from the Indigenous Nations Poets fellows.

Our board member, and poet, Edgar Silex hosts this event.

Edgar Silex is the author of three poetry collections, Through All The Displacements and Acts of Love, from Northwestern University Press, and Borrowing Directions from the Dark, forthcoming from Northwest Poetry's Native Torchlight Series. Mr. Silex also authored a chapbook, Even the Dead Have Memories, from New Sins Press. His first book was a nominee for the National Book Award, his second book was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. He has received 11 nominations to the Pushcart Prize, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Artist District program in Baltimore. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. His Indigenous ancestors are Texcuexe and Nican Nahua/Nicarao. He is in the process of learning Nahuatl, his Indigenous language.

OUR READERS:

Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken is a queer Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Uchinaanchu writer from Nānākuli, Hawaiʻi, living in Tovaangar (“Los Angeles”). They are a 2026 IN NA PO fellow.

Christopher Sablan Diaz is an indigenous CHamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan. He’s been featured by NBC News, Poets & Writers.org, and recently he was shortlisted for the 2026 Poet of the Year Award by ONLY POEMS literary magazine. He’s received support from Indigenous Nations Poets, Kundiman, the McCormack Writing Center, the Washington State Arts Commission, and the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology. He's a two-time grand slam champion and volunteers to co-facilitate writing workshops at the juvenile detention center in Vancouver, WA.

Selene Hofstetter is a third-year graduate student in Colorado State University’s MFA poetry program. She grew up in Riverside County, Southern California, and is a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon. A 2026 In-Na-Po Fellow, she currently resides and writes in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Sunni Parisien is an Anishinaabe poet and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota. She holds a B.A. in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration from Yale University. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Literary Arts at Brown University.

Mary Leauna Christensen 2022, 2023, & 2025 Fellow, Indigenous Nations Poets Mary Leauna Christensen, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, received her PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry can be found in the Southern Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, and the Gettysburg Review, among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in the Common and in Black Warrior Review. She was named a 2022 Indigenous Nations Poets fellow for the inaugural In-Na-Po retreat and was selected as a returning fellow for 2023. Mary Leauna has also been awarded the Fireweed Fellowship for Indigenous women writers under 40 to attend the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska in 2025. She is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Tacey M. Atsitty 2022 Fellow, Indigenous Nations Poets Dr. Tacey M. Atsitty de Gonzales, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta'neeszahnii (Tangle People). Her first book is Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018), and her second book is (At) Wrist (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023). She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University and is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where she lives with her husband.

Zadok 2025 Fellow, Indigenous Nations Poets E.J. Zadok (Odawa) is an Afro-Anishinaabe poet and citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians. His poem 'A HUG MEANS MORE' recently appeared in Now&Then, a Greater Lansing independent zine. E.J. Zadok creates pseudo-epistolary works of ecopoetry, experimenting with form and convention to create emergent styles inspired by 21st century wilderness and alternative music. He is a recent graduate from Michigan State University, having completed a four-year degree in Political Science Pre-law and English Literary Studies.