< >Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Her seven books of poetry, which includes such well-known titles as How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses have garnered many awards. These include the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. For A Girl Becoming, a young adult/coming of age book, was released in 2009 and is Harjo’s most recent publication.
Ancestry: Native American
Genre: Instrumental
Albums
Awards, Nominations & Submissions
| 2012 | Best Album Cover Design | Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears | Submission |
| 2011 | Best Flute CD | Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears | Nominee |
Biography
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Her seven books of poetry, which includes such well-known titles as How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses have garnered many awards. These include the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. For A Girl Becoming, a young adult/coming of age book, was released in 2009 and is Harjo’s most recent publication. She has released four award-winning CD's of original music and in 2009 won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year for Winding Through the Milky Way. Her most recent CD release is a traditional flute album: Red Dreams, a Trail Beyond Tears. She performs nationally and internationally with her band, the Arrow Dynamics. She also performs her one-woman show, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, which premiered at the Wells Fargo Theater in Los Angeles in 2009 with recent performances at the Public Theater in NYC and LaJolla Playhouse as part of the Native Voices at the Autry. She was recently awarded 2011 Artist of the Year from the Mvskoke Women’s Leadership Initiative, and has received a Rasmuson US Artists Fellowship and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Harjo writes a column “Comings and Goings” for her tribal newspaper, the Muscogee Nation News. Forthcoming is Soul Talk, Song Language, a book of essays, columns, interviews and photographs from Wesleyan University Press forthcoming October 2011, and Crazy Brave, a memoir from W.W. Norton in 2012. Her one-woman show has been accepted for production at the Public Theater in New York and her next play, a musical hybrid:I Think I Love You, An All Night Round Dance is being commissioned by the Public Theater. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
