Sherwin Bitsui
| Sherwin Bitsui | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
1975 Holbrook, Arizona |
| Occupation | Writer, painter |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Notable works | Floodsong |
| Notable awards |
American Book Award; PEN Open Book Award |
| Website | |
|
bitsui | |
Sherwin Bitsui (born 1974 Fort Defiance, Arizona) is originally from Baaʼoogeedí (White Cone, Arizona), on the Navajo Nation. His book, Floodsong, won the American Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award.
Life
He is Navajo of the Todichʼíiʼnii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tłʼízíłání (Many Goats Clan).[1]
He holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program. He is the recipient of the 2000-01 Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the 1999 Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, a Soul Mountain Residency, a Lannan Foundation Literary Residency Fellowship and a 2006 Whiting Award.[2] In 2012, he was honored with an NACF Artist Fellowship in Literature.[3] He has served in visiting faculty positions, including distinguished visiting, Eminent Writer for the University of Wyoming, Visiting Hugo Writer University of Montana, and San Diego State University, where he has been on creative writing faculty since 2013. Also, since 2013, he has served on the faculty of the Institute of American Indian Arts in the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program.[4]
Sherwin has published poems in American Poet, The Iowa Review, Frank (Paris), Lit Magazine, and elsewhere. His poems were also anthologized in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas.
Many of Bitsui's poems explore how different values, concepts and ideas become when experienced in Navaho as opposed to English.[5]
Currently, he lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Selected works
Poetry
- Flood Song. Copper Canyon Press. 2009. ISBN 978-1-55659-308-6.
- Shapeshift. University of Arizona Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0-8165-2342-9.
References
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sherwin Bitsui. |
- ↑ Kenneth Lincoln (1 January 2009). Speak Like Singing: Classics of Native American Literature. UNM Press. pp. 291–. ISBN 978-0-8263-4170-9.
- ↑ "Sherwin Bitsui". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 9 April 2014.
- ↑ "Sherwin Bitsui". Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ↑ "MFA Faculty IAIA". Retrieved 22 July 2014.
- ↑ Elizabeth Delaney Hoffman (22 February 2012). American Indians and Popular Culture [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. p. 151. ISBN 978-0-313-37991-8.