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Sherwin Bitsui

2010 American Book Award

 

Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is Diné of the Tódích’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizílaaní (Many Goats Clan). He holds an A.F.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program and is currently completing his studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He is the recipient of a 2005 Lannan Foundation Residency in Marfa, Texas, and the Whiting Writers Award in 2006. He also works for literacy programs that bring poets and writers into public schools where there are Native American student populations. Bitsui has published his poems in American Poet, The Iowa Review, Frank (Paris), LIT, and elsewhere. His poems were also anthologized in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century.

In his own words:

On the title of Flood Song: "The poem is a song that floods, ebbs, and is searching for a name.  I feel that it's a body of work that speaks a third language, combining Navajo sensibilities with English linearity."

On the inevitable comparison between him and Sherman Alexie, the "Native American Superstar": "Sherman's charismatic and funny, but there's only one Sherman."

(from the November/December 2009 issue of Poets & Writers.)

For more on Sherwin Bitsui, visit his website.

Listen to his interview with Native America Calling.

 

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