Kimberly Blaeser and Gerald Vizenor Reading

The Department of English is proud to present the inaugural Gerald Vizenor Lecture, honoring the acclaimed Anishinaabe author of more than 40 works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. The illustrious evening will feature readings and conversation with Gerald Vizenor and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser, together representing two generations of internationally recognized literary artists from the White Earth Reservation of the Anishinaabe in Minnesota.

This is a free event and open to the public; reserve your free tickets. Reception to follow. For questions about accessibility services and the venue, please email sutt0063@umn.edu or call 612-626-1528.

Gerald Vizenor is a prolific writer and literary critic whose published works include fiction, poetry, poetics, and studies of Native American identity, politics, and literature. He is a citizen of the White Earth Nation. Professor Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley, Vizenor also held academic appointments at the University of New Mexico, University of California, Santa Cruz, University of Oklahoma, and the University of Minnesota, where he earned his BA. He did graduate studies at the University of Minnesota and Harvard University. 

Vizenor’s most recent publications include Favor of Crows: New and Selected Haiku (2014); the essay collection Native Provenance: The Betrayal of Cultural Creativity (2019); and the historical novel series of Blue Ravens (2014), Native Tributes (2018), Satie on the Seine: Letters to the Heirs of the Fur Trade (2020), Waiting for Wovoka: Envoys of Good Cheer and Liberty (2023), and Theatre of Chance: Native Celebrities of Nothing in an Existential Colony (Wesleyan University Press, February 2025). Among Vizenor’s many honors are a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award, PEN Oakland–Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Mark Twain Award for distinguished contributions to Midwestern Literature, and American Book Award for Griever: An American Monkey King in China. Before beginning his academic and writing career, Vizenor was a staff writer with the Minneapolis Tribune, following in the journalistic tradition of relatives who published two independent newspapers on the White Earth Reservation in the nineteenth century—The Progress and The Tomahawk, the first two independent newspapers on a federal reservation.

Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets, is a poet, photographer, and scholar. She is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Ancient Light (University of Arizona Press, 2024), Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance (2020), and Copper Yearning (2019). Blaeser wrote the monograph Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. She edited Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry and served as contributing editor for When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020). Her poetry is widely anthologized and her photographs, picto-poems, and ekphrastic pieces have appeared in exhibits such as “Visualizing Sovereignty,” and “No More Stolen Sisters.” 

An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Blaeser is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation and grew up on the reservation. The 2024 Mackey Chair in Creative Writing at Beloit College, Blaeser is a Professor Emerita at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and an MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts. She serves on the Poetry Coalition of the Academy of American Poets and as Vice President of Letters for Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. Her accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas.