2026 MFACW July Evening Reading Series: Crisosto Apache, Toni Jensen, and Jamie Figueroa
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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 (MST): 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:
Crisosto Apache is originally from Mescalero, New Mexico (US), on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and currently lives in the Denver metro area in Colorado. Crisosto is also the current 11th Poet Laureate for Colorado (2026–27), appointed by Governor Jared Polis on Wednesday, January 28, 2026. Crisosto is Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the ‘Áshįįhí (Salt Clan) born for the Kinyaa’áanii (Towering House Clan), and is an Associate Professor of English writing and Creative writing at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. Apache holds an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Crisosto’s debut collection, GENESIS (Lost Alphabet), is out of print. Crisosto’s second poetry collection is Ghostword (Gnashing Teeth Publication), winner of the 2023 Betty Berzon Emerging Writers Award and a finalist for the Colorado Authors League Award in poetry. Apache’s newest poetry is(ness) was also published by Gnashing Teeth in 2025. Crisosto is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and is currently an editor-at-large for The Offing. Crisosto continues to advocate for the Native American Indigenous LGBTQ/Two-Spirit identity. Apache’s dedication to poetry remains a passion, and teaching poetry to the youth is a continued goal.
Toni Jensen (Métis) is the author of a short story collection, From the Hilltop, and a memoir-in-essays about gun violence, Carry, forthcoming from Ballantine. She is the recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the Gary Wilson Short Fiction Award. Her essays and stories have been published in journals such as Orion, Catapult, and Ecotone. She teaches in the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas and in the low-residency MFA Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).
Jamie Figueroa (Boricua) is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer, which “brims with spellbinding prose, magical elements, and wounded, full-hearted characters that nearly jump off the page” (Publishers Weekly). Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Elle, McSweeney’s, and Kweli Journal, among others. She received a Truman Capote Award and was a Bread Loaf/Rona Jaffe Scholar. A VONA alum, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Figueroa’s memoir-in-essays is forthcoming from Pantheon Books.
https://iaia.edu/event/2026-mfacw-july-evening-reading-series-apache-jensen-figueroa/
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 (MST): 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:
Crisosto Apache is originally from Mescalero, New Mexico (US), on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and currently lives in the Denver metro area in Colorado. Crisosto is also the current 11th Poet Laureate for Colorado (2026–27), appointed by Governor Jared Polis on Wednesday, January 28, 2026. Crisosto is Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the ‘Áshįįhí (Salt Clan) born for the Kinyaa’áanii (Towering House Clan), and is an Associate Professor of English writing and Creative writing at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. Apache holds an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Crisosto’s debut collection, GENESIS (Lost Alphabet), is out of print. Crisosto’s second poetry collection is Ghostword (Gnashing Teeth Publication), winner of the 2023 Betty Berzon Emerging Writers Award and a finalist for the Colorado Authors League Award in poetry. Apache’s newest poetry is(ness) was also published by Gnashing Teeth in 2025. Crisosto is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and is currently an editor-at-large for The Offing. Crisosto continues to advocate for the Native American Indigenous LGBTQ/Two-Spirit identity. Apache’s dedication to poetry remains a passion, and teaching poetry to the youth is a continued goal.
Toni Jensen (Métis) is the author of a short story collection, From the Hilltop, and a memoir-in-essays about gun violence, Carry, forthcoming from Ballantine. She is the recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the Gary Wilson Short Fiction Award. Her essays and stories have been published in journals such as Orion, Catapult, and Ecotone. She teaches in the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas and in the low-residency MFA Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).
Jamie Figueroa (Boricua) is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer, which “brims with spellbinding prose, magical elements, and wounded, full-hearted characters that nearly jump off the page” (Publishers Weekly). Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Elle, McSweeney’s, and Kweli Journal, among others. She received a Truman Capote Award and was a Bread Loaf/Rona Jaffe Scholar. A VONA alum, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Figueroa’s memoir-in-essays is forthcoming from Pantheon Books.
https://iaia.edu/event/2026-mfacw-july-evening-reading-series-apache-jensen-figueroa/
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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