National Book Award Finalist Layli Long Soldier at Bainbridge Island Book Festival
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Poet Layli Long Soldier's new book,"WE," which she will read from at the September 26 Bainbridge Island Book Festival, has been longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award in poetry!
A citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation, Long Soldier is best known for her poetry collection "Whereas" (2017), which references the 2009 United States Congressional Apology to Native peoples. Her work uses visual poetics and often addresses Indigenous history, the ethics of documentation, language and power, and motherhood. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Long Soldier will be joined by Rena Priest, a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation and the 2021–2023 Washington State Poet Laureate. In this role, she championed poetry that celebrates the ecological gifts of her ancestral homelands and the bioregion.
"Whereas," by Layli Long Soldier, won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2015, Long Soldier received a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. Other honors include a 2016 Whiting Writer’s Award, an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. Long Soldier teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and served as the 2024-25 Endowed Chair at Texas State University. She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A book signing will follow the event.
Layli Long Soldier’s appearance at the Book Festival is funded in part by the Bainbridge Community Foundation and ArtsWA.
More information about the Bainbridge Island Book Festival is at https://www.bainbridgeislandbookfestival.org/
A citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation, Long Soldier is best known for her poetry collection "Whereas" (2017), which references the 2009 United States Congressional Apology to Native peoples. Her work uses visual poetics and often addresses Indigenous history, the ethics of documentation, language and power, and motherhood. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Long Soldier will be joined by Rena Priest, a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation and the 2021–2023 Washington State Poet Laureate. In this role, she championed poetry that celebrates the ecological gifts of her ancestral homelands and the bioregion.
"Whereas," by Layli Long Soldier, won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2015, Long Soldier received a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. Other honors include a 2016 Whiting Writer’s Award, an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. Long Soldier teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and served as the 2024-25 Endowed Chair at Texas State University. She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A book signing will follow the event.
Layli Long Soldier’s appearance at the Book Festival is funded in part by the Bainbridge Community Foundation and ArtsWA.
More information about the Bainbridge Island Book Festival is at https://www.bainbridgeislandbookfestival.org/
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Where is it happening?
Bainbridge Island Senior Center, 301 SE Shannon Dr, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2930, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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