Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo will be awarded DLitt on Tuesday 11 June 2024 during the morning graduation ceremony.
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of ten books of poetry, several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs. In 2019, Joy was appointed the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold the position.
She is the recipient of the 2022 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2019 Jackson Prize from Poets and Writers, the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, among others.
Joy’s poetry includes the titles Weaving Sundown in a Scarlett Light, An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. She has also published two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, which invites readers to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realisations of her “poet-warrior” road.
Joy has served as editor of several anthologies of Native American writing, including Living Nations, Living Words, the companion anthology to her signature poet laureate project.
Joy is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets Board of Directors, Chair of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and artist-in-residence for the Bob Dylan Center. A renowned musician, she performs with her saxophone nationally and internationally. Her most recent album is I Pray For My Enemies. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.