#joy-harjo

#joy-harjo

"Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era" quickly became one of my favorite nonfiction books written by a journalist. I appreciated how he showed the grueling, day-to-day work local journalism requires, and how many layers of people fought him in revealing the despicable work of the Ku Klux Klan.

When the London jazz festival ran online only in 2020, an enthralling livestreamed performance by Swiss harpist Julie Campiche's avant-jazz ensemble was a startling highlight, introducing UK audiences to a virtuoso instrumentalist and composer who was already turning heads in Europe. Campiche plucked guitar, zither and east Asian-style sounds from the harp, mingled with vocal loops, classical music, Nordic ambient jazz and more. You might call her soundscape magical or otherworldly if it didn't coexist with a campaigner's political urgency on environmental and social issues.

I've been writing both poetry and short stories since I was a child, but I first began to think of myself as a writer when my 11th-grade English teacher encouraged me to lean in. I started to take my craft seriously in college, majoring in English with a focus on creative writing. By the time I graduated in the mid-1990s, I considered myself a poet.

I've been nominated over the years, which is always a pleasant discovery... but to actually win it is a wonderful thing.

There's love, all the time beside me, its rolling tides polishing jagged moments with surprise apologies silly jokes extra snacks and the great luck of seeing a heart switch on the light that opens a locked-down face. There are landmarks: each person I've loved each one who loved me-quirky waves we've ridden together.

I've read books and watched Ken Burns documentaries, but my principal education in American history comes from our music. It's my pathway as I search for identity, for lineage and legacy, for community and for an understanding of this vast land, in all its confusing complexities and contradictions. I've learned that our music is a map of our history. It traces our roots and routes, and marks all the places where our journeys intersect to meet on common ground.

I had to make a transition for survival from folk music, which was killed by the British Invasion. David Crosby was afraid that they were going to slap some kind of band on me and that it would ruin my music. So I made that record with voice and guitar. Then the record company sicced the band on me. It was called The Section, they were a good band for James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, but they couldn't play my music.

It was the first Wednesday of December and the last One-Page Wednesday of 2025. Hosted by Portland novelist Emme Lund (The Boy with a Bird in His Chest) at the Literary Arts bookstore, the free monthly event is an open mic that functions more like a public writers' group. Students, aspiring writers, and National Book Award-winning authors hang out and read aloud one page from a work in progress.

San Francisco Poet Laureate emerita invites writers featured in Women in a Golden State to present at SFPL's Monthly poetry reading. was San Francisco's seventh Poet Laureate. Her poetry draws on her multiethnic background which includes Polish and Cherokee heritage, and her experiences as a lifelong resident of San Francisco. Her most recent book of poetry, Pick a Garnet to Sleep In, was published in 2024, and her book of essays, Noodle, Rant, Tangent, was published in 2022.

Yiyun Li reads her story 'Calm Sea and Hard Faring,' from the March 9, 2026, issue of the magazine. Li is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novels 'Must I Go' and 'The Book of Goose,' and the story collection 'Wednesday's Child,' which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024.