2001 American Indian Festival of Words
Author Award - Honoring Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo, a nationally renowned poet, musician and native Tulsan, is the winner of the inaugural American Indian Author Award. Strongly influenced by her Muscogee-Creek heritage, feminist and social concerns, and her background in the arts, Harjo incorporates American Indian myths, symbols and values into her writing. Her work is autobiographical and motivated by her love of the natural world and her preoccupation with survival and the limitations of language.
Her poetry collections include "The Last Song" (1075); "What Moon Drove Me to This?" (1980); "She Had Some Horses" (1983); "Secrets From the Center of hte World" (1989); "In Mad Love and War" (1990); winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of American; "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky" (1994), winner of the 1995 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry; and " A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales" (2000).
Harjo also plays the saxophone and performs professionally with her bank Poetic Justice.
Go to the author's website.
