A Virtual Gathering of Native Voices

- By The Massachusetts Review

Watch our Virtual Gathering of Native American Voices from Dec. 10th with Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., Elise Paschen, Toni Jensen, and Tacey M. Atsitty, moderated by Laura Furlan, the reading will hand over the mic to contemporary Indigenous voices, rather than cosplay Pilgrims, during the 400th anniversary of the landing at Plymouth Rock.

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné, is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). Her maternal grandfather is Tábąąhí (Water Edge People) and her paternal grandfather is Hashk’áánhadzóhí (Yucca Fruit Strung-Out-In-A-Line People) from Cove, AZ. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Kenyon Review Online, Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, Literary Hub, New Poets of Native Nations, and other publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018). She is the poetry judge for Eggtooth Editions chapbook contest, director of the Navajo Film Festival, a member of the Board of Directors for Lightscatter Press, a member of the Advisory Council for Brigham Young University’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, and member of the Advisory Board for the Intermountain All-Women Hoop Dance Competition. Check out her book, Rain Scald, here.

Toni Jensen is the author of a short story collection, From the Hilltop, and a memoir-in-essays about gun violence, Carry, out now from Ballantine. She is the recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the Gary Wilson Short Fiction Award. Check out her latest book, Carry, here. 

Elise Paschen, an enrolled member of the Osage Nation, is the author of The Nightlife, Bestiary, Infidelities (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), and Houses: Coasts. Her poems have appeared in When The Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, Best American Poetry, the New Yorker and Poetry, among other publications. She has edited numerous anthologies, including The Eloquent Poem as well as The New York Times best-selling Poetry Speaks. A co-founder of Poetry in Motion, Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Check out her latest book,The Nightlife, here.

Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr. is Professor and Chair of Indigenous Nations Studies and Director of the School of Gender Race and Nations at Portland State University. His mosaic novel about sort of growing up in Chicago, Sacred Smokes, winner of the 2019 Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing, is now in its second printing. His next work, Sacred City, will be published Fall 2021, also by the University of New Mexico Press, who released his edited volume The Faster Redder Road: The Best UnAmerican Stories of Stephen Graham Jones. He is the Creative Editor for Transmotion (a journal of postmodern indigenous studies). His fiction and photography have been published in The Raven Chronicles, Red Earth Review, The Journal of Working-Class Studies, Unnerving Magazine, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and Yellow Medicine Review, among others. Check out his latest book, Sacred Smokes.

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