Science + Literature: The Science of Hope

Ancient Light by Kimberly Blaeser, a 2026 Science + Literature selected title, collects poems that trace the many crises Indigenous communities navigate—from centuries of violence to the COVID-19 pandemic—alongside the ancestral knowledge that allows for a reclamation of language, of land, and of healing. Join Blaeser for a reading and conversation on the relationship between poetry, science, and the world around us. Moderated by Sean Hill, poet, professor, and 2026 Science + Literature selection committee member.

Free copies of Ancient Light will be available for attendees and additional books will be available for purchase on-site, with thanks to Lake City Books. The program will be followed by a book signing.

Presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation, Wisconsin Book Festival, and Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is a multi-genre author. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Her debut short fiction collection, Red Ants, is forthcoming. Blaeser’s honors include the 2025 Poets & Writers’ Writer for Writers Award, Hayden’s Ferry Review’s Indigenous Poets Prize, and Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Professor Emerita at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts.

Sean Hill is the author of Dangerous Goods and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, and the forthcoming The Negroes Send Their Love. Hill has received numerous awards including fellowships from Cave Canem, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Harvard Review, Orion, The Oxford American, Poetry, and numerous other journals and anthologies including Black Nature and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. Hill lives in southwestern Montana with his family and is an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Montana.

The National Book Foundation’s Science + Literature program identifies three books annually, across genres, that deepen readers’ understanding of science and technology, and focuses on highlighting the diversity of voices in contemporary science and technology writing. Science + Literature is made possible by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Read more about the Science + Literature program on the National Book Foundation's website.

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