Poetry Reading: Natalie Diaz

Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 7:00pm at CNM Main Campus, Smith Brasher Hall, room 100

Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She was part of the Old Dominion Lady Monarch basketball team that made it to the NCAA Championship game in 1997. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia for several years, Diaz returned to Old Dominion and completed a double-MFA in poetry and fiction. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in May of 2012. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Black Renaissance Noire, Crab Orchard Review, and others. She is a 2012 Bread Loaf Scholar and a recipient of a Lannan Residency in Marfa, TX. She was also awarded a 2012 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2012 Narrative Prize from Narrative Magazine, and a 2012 Native Arts & Culture Foundation Artist Fellowship. Diaz currently lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and directs the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program, working with the last remaining speakers at Fort Mojave to teach and revitalize the Mojave language.