2026 MFACW July Evening Reading Series: Chris Santiago, Bojan Louis, and Brooke Swaney
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Join the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) from Sunday, July 12, through Thursday, July 16, 2026, as the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFACW) program presents its 2026 July Residency, welcoming a new cohort of incoming graduate students. Visiting writers, acclaimed for their work in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and screenwriting, will read and perform alongside several of our full-time mentors. Each evening will engage audiences with poetry, memoir, or fiction from some of today’s most vibrant and vital voices.
We are pleased to invite the public to attend the July Evening Reading Series events, held in the CLE Commons Room 201 on the IAIA campus at 83 Avan Nu Po Road, Santa Fe, NM 87508.
All readings will be held in person and virtually via livestream on the IAIA website and Facebook. See links below to watch the livestreams. All readings are in Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).
July Evening Reading Series Events:
- Sunday, July 12 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Readings by Chris Santiago, Bojan Louis (Diné), and Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet Nation Citizen and Salish Descendant)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
- Monday, July 13 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Readings by Nicole Chung, Matias Viegner, and Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota Nation)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
- Tuesday, July 14 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Readings by Jim Terry (Ho-Chunk), Aaron John Curtis (St. Regis Mohawk Tribe), and Sherwin Bitsui (Diné)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
- Wednesday, July 15 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Film Screening featuring Wenonah Wilms (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) of Wilms Films—IAIA Auditorium, IAIA Campus, no livestream available
- Thursday, July 16 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Readings by Crisosto Apache (Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné) ’15, Toni Jensen (Métis), and Jamie Figueroa (Boricua)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
All readings are open and free to the public. We hope to see you there!
For questions, please contact IAIA MFACW Program Coordinator Veronica Bustamante at [email protected].
Biographies:
Chris Santiago is the author of Tula, selected by A. Van Jordan as the winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize, and Small Wars Manual (Milkweed Editions, 2025). The recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Kundiman, and the Mellon Foundation/ACLS, he received his PhD from the University of Southern California. Recent poems and nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming from Guernica, Conduit, Poetry Northwest, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Waterstone Review. In 2023, he joined the full-time faculty of CalArts, where he teaches in the Creative Writing MFA Program and in the School of Critical Studies. His teaching areas include creative writing, sound culture, and Asian American literature. He has also taught at USC and at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Bojan Louis (Diné) is a poet, essayist, short story writer, and mentor in the MFACW program. He is the author of the short story collection Sinking Bell, the poetry collection Currents, and the nonfiction chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona. His work can be found in Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers; When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry; and The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature. Louis has received a MacDowell Fellowship and a 2018 American Book Award.
Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet Nation citizen and Salish descendant) is a 2003 Stanford graduate. She went on to obtain her MFA from NYU. A 2013 Native Arts and Cultures Fellow, a 2014 Sundance Native Lab Fellow, and a Time Warner Fellow, her work has screened at Sundance, ImagineNATIVE, the Autry, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. She is versed in both short- and long-form content creation.
https://iaia.edu/event/2026-mfacw-july-evening-reading-series-santiago-louis-swaney/
MFA in Creative Writing
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is designed as a two-year program with two intensive week-long residencies per year (summer and winter) at IAIA. Students and faculty mentors gather for a week of workshops, lectures, and readings. At the end of the residency week, each student is matched with a faculty mentor, who then works one-on-one with the student for the semester. IAIA’s program is unique in that we emphasize the importance of Indigenous writers speaking to the Indigenous experience. The literature we read carries a distinct Native American and First Nations emphasis. The MAFCW offers four areas of emphasis: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting.
We are pleased to invite the public to attend the July Evening Reading Series events, held in the CLE Commons Room 201 on the IAIA campus at 83 Avan Nu Po Road, Santa Fe, NM 87508.
All readings will be held in person and virtually via livestream on the IAIA website and Facebook. See links below to watch the livestreams. All readings are in Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).
July Evening Reading Series Events:
- Sunday, July 12 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Readings by Chris Santiago, Bojan Louis (Diné), and Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet Nation Citizen and Salish Descendant)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
- Monday, July 13 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Readings by Nicole Chung, Matias Viegner, and Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota Nation)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
- Tuesday, July 14 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Readings by Jim Terry (Ho-Chunk), Aaron John Curtis (St. Regis Mohawk Tribe), and Sherwin Bitsui (Diné)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
- Wednesday, July 15 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Film Screening featuring Wenonah Wilms (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) of Wilms Films—IAIA Auditorium, IAIA Campus, no livestream available
- Thursday, July 16 at 6:00 pm (MDT): Readings by Crisosto Apache (Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné) ’15, Toni Jensen (Métis), and Jamie Figueroa (Boricua)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
All readings are open and free to the public. We hope to see you there!
For questions, please contact IAIA MFACW Program Coordinator Veronica Bustamante at [email protected].
Biographies:
Chris Santiago is the author of Tula, selected by A. Van Jordan as the winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize, and Small Wars Manual (Milkweed Editions, 2025). The recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Kundiman, and the Mellon Foundation/ACLS, he received his PhD from the University of Southern California. Recent poems and nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming from Guernica, Conduit, Poetry Northwest, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Waterstone Review. In 2023, he joined the full-time faculty of CalArts, where he teaches in the Creative Writing MFA Program and in the School of Critical Studies. His teaching areas include creative writing, sound culture, and Asian American literature. He has also taught at USC and at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Bojan Louis (Diné) is a poet, essayist, short story writer, and mentor in the MFACW program. He is the author of the short story collection Sinking Bell, the poetry collection Currents, and the nonfiction chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona. His work can be found in Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers; When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry; and The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature. Louis has received a MacDowell Fellowship and a 2018 American Book Award.
Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet Nation citizen and Salish descendant) is a 2003 Stanford graduate. She went on to obtain her MFA from NYU. A 2013 Native Arts and Cultures Fellow, a 2014 Sundance Native Lab Fellow, and a Time Warner Fellow, her work has screened at Sundance, ImagineNATIVE, the Autry, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. She is versed in both short- and long-form content creation.
https://iaia.edu/event/2026-mfacw-july-evening-reading-series-santiago-louis-swaney/
MFA in Creative Writing
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is designed as a two-year program with two intensive week-long residencies per year (summer and winter) at IAIA. Students and faculty mentors gather for a week of workshops, lectures, and readings. At the end of the residency week, each student is matched with a faculty mentor, who then works one-on-one with the student for the semester. IAIA’s program is unique in that we emphasize the importance of Indigenous writers speaking to the Indigenous experience. The literature we read carries a distinct Native American and First Nations emphasis. The MAFCW offers four areas of emphasis: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting.
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Where is it happening?
Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), 47 A van NU Po, Santa Fe, NM 87508, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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