2021 – Writing

Joy Harjo, Muscogee (Creek), in 2019 Harjo was the first Native American named U.S. poet laureate; she has since been named to three consecutive terms. A critically acclaimed poet, Harjo’s honors include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the 1990 American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award. 

She has received fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rasmuson Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation. Joy Harjo has won an American Book Award, the PEN Center USA prize for creative nonfiction, the Ruth Lilly Prize in Poetry, and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. She is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and is an accomplished saxophone player.

> Interview with Joy Harjo at the 2021 Induction Ceremony: