Poet, ‘Girl Warrior’ Joy Harjo to appear in public talk in December
One of the most renowned indigenous poets will be participating in a New York City discussion open to the public next month.
Joy Harjo, an international performer and writer of the Muscogee Nation and the country’s twenty-third poet laureate, will be in conversation with fellow poet Tracy K. Smith for a taping of the “On Being” podcast hosted by Krista Tippett on December 4 at Symphony Space in Manhattan.
Harjo will be discussing her recent work, “Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age,” a lyrical and kaleidoscopic book about the struggles, challenges, and joys of coming of age, and Smith will be discussing her “Fear Less,” a warm invitation to find meaning, consolation, and hope through poetry.
Tickets for the event and other information can be found here on Symphony Space’s website.
Having served three terms as Poet Laureate, Harjo is the winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Frost Medal, Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and was recently honored with a National Humanities Medal.
The author of eleven books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed, “Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years,” several plays, children’s books, and non-fiction works, and two memoirs, “Crazy Brave” and “Poet Warrior,” her many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
“Cloud Runner” Harjo’s twelfth book of poetry, will be published by W.W. Norton in Fall of 2026, following a book of short essays, “Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age,” released earlier this fall, and her new album, “Insomnia and Seven Steps to Grace,” co-produced with esperanza spaulding, due next spring.
