2026 MFACW July Evening Reading Series: Nicole Chung, Matias Viegner, and Layli Long Soldier
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:
Nicole Chung is the author of the award-winning memoir A Living Remedy, which was named a Notable Book by The New York Times and a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen other outlets. Her 2018 bestseller All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and an Indies Choice Honor Book. Chung has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and many other publications. Previously, she was the digital editorial director of Catapult, where she published hundreds of writers and helped lead its magazine to two National Magazine Awards; before that, she was the managing editor of The Toast and an editor for Hyphen magazine. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she currently lives in the Washington, DC area.
Matias Viegner is the author of The Assassination of Kathy Acker and 2500 Random Things About Me Too, a book of experimental nonfiction sometimes hailed as the first book composed on and through Facebook. In 2004, he co-founded and collaborated with Fallen Fruit, a participatory art practice focusing on fruit, urban space, and public life. His work has been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, Ars Electronica, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Smart Museum of Art, The Blaffer Art Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Machine Project, New Langton Arts, Highways Performance Space, The Hammer Museum, the ARCO Madrid biennial, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as internationally in Denmark, Germany, Austria, Colombia, and Mexico.
Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota) holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and an MFA from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The New York Times, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010) and WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017). She is currently pursuing a master’s in law at the University of New Mexico. She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
https://iaia.edu/event/2026-mfacw-july-evening-reading-series-chung-viegner-solider/
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:
Nicole Chung is the author of the award-winning memoir A Living Remedy, which was named a Notable Book by The New York Times and a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen other outlets. Her 2018 bestseller All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and an Indies Choice Honor Book. Chung has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and many other publications. Previously, she was the digital editorial director of Catapult, where she published hundreds of writers and helped lead its magazine to two National Magazine Awards; before that, she was the managing editor of The Toast and an editor for Hyphen magazine. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she currently lives in the Washington, DC area.
Matias Viegner is the author of The Assassination of Kathy Acker and 2500 Random Things About Me Too, a book of experimental nonfiction sometimes hailed as the first book composed on and through Facebook. In 2004, he co-founded and collaborated with Fallen Fruit, a participatory art practice focusing on fruit, urban space, and public life. His work has been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, Ars Electronica, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Smart Museum of Art, The Blaffer Art Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Machine Project, New Langton Arts, Highways Performance Space, The Hammer Museum, the ARCO Madrid biennial, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as internationally in Denmark, Germany, Austria, Colombia, and Mexico.
Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota) holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and an MFA from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The New York Times, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010) and WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017). She is currently pursuing a master’s in law at the University of New Mexico. She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
https://iaia.edu/event/2026-mfacw-july-evening-reading-series-chung-viegner-solider/
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.
Where is it happening?
Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), 47 A van NU Po, Santa Fe, NM 87508, United States
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
Host or PublisherInstitute of American Indian Arts (IAIA)
