WINTER 2026 CONTRIBUTORS

Beverly Morris (Aleut) is producer, director, and owner of Chain Reaction Productions. She has been associated with the IAIA since 1988 as a student, staff member, producer, and director. Morris received her BFA from Stephen F. Austin State.

Dr. Brandon Hobson is the author of the acclaimed adult fiction novels The Devil is a Southpaw (2025), The Removed (2021), Where the Dead Sit Talking (2018), and other books. He also authored The Storyteller (2023) for children. The Devil is a Southpaw was recently announced as a finalist for the 2026 PEN / Jean Stein Book Award! He was also a finalist for the National Book Award, finalist for the St. Francis Literary Award, and winner of the Reading the West Award. His fiction has won a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in the Best American Short Stories 2021, McSweeney's, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, NOON, and in many other publications. Dr. Hobson is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at New Mexico State University.  We are also so very lucky to have him on staff here at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, as a beloved Writing Mentor. 

Dacia J. Harrold is a queer psychoanalyst from California. Her writing is inspired by the mood of our time, highlighting emerging cultural and climatological phenomena, and imagining things imminent. Her work is published in The Suisun Valley Review, Creosote, The Coachella Review, Puerto Del Sol, and in press at The Comstock Review.

Danielle Shandiin Emerson is a Diné writer from Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation. Her clans are Tłaashchi’i (Red Cheek People Clan), born for Ta’neezaahníí (Tangled People Clan). Her maternal grandfather is Ashííhí (Salt People Clan) and her paternal grandfather is Táchii’nii (Red Running into the Water People Clan). She has a B.A. in Education Studies and a B.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University. She has received fellowships from GrubStreet, Lambda Literary, The Diné Artisan + Author Capacity Building Institute, Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, The Highlight Foundation, and Monson Arts. She has work published from swamp pink, Academy of American Poets, Yellow Medicine Review, Poetry Magazine, Thin Air Magazine, The Chapter House Journal, Poetry Northwest, and others. Her writing centers healing, kinship, language-learning, and Diné narratives. She is a MFA Fiction graduate student at Vanderbilt University. 

Donavan Kamakani Albano is a māhū Kanaka ʻŌiwi poet from Kāneʻohe, Koʻolaupoko, Oʻahu. He was raised in Kalihilihiolaumiha and is genealogically connected to Maui, the Philippines, and Borikén (Puerto Rico). A 2025 Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow, Albano’s work has appeared in Poetry Northwest and Pasefika Presence. He holds an M.A. in Indigenous Politics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Elaina Erola is a watercolorist, attorney, and member of the Blackfeet Tribe, currently a candidate for the L.L.M. program in Environmental Law at Lewis & Clark. Her writing has appeared in Alternating Press, Yellow Medicine Review, the Society for Cultural Anthropology, Texas Tech Law Review, and is forthcoming in the Sewanee Review, and the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation. In 2024, she was selected for PEN America’s Emerging Voices Workshop. In 2025, she joined the Tin House Winter Workshop and was selected as a summer 2025 scholar for their workshop in Portland, Oregon.

Emerald GoingSnake is a lesbian poet from the Giduwa and Mvskoke nations in Oklahoma. She was a 2023 and 2024 Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow and received the 2024 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award for poetry. Her work has been shared in Poets.org, Tribal College Journal, Terrain.org, Poetry for All, and elsewhere. Emerald has a BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Gerald Vizenor is a leading figure in Native American literature and critical thought. An enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe with roots in the White Earth Reservation, his work draws on tribal experience while challenging imposed narratives about Indigenous peoples. The author of more than thirty books spanning fiction and cultural theory, he directed Native American Studies at UC Berkeley and is now Professor Emeritus there and Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

James Thomas Stevens – Aronhió:ta’s (Akwesasne Mohawk) was born in Niagara Falls, New York. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Brown University’s graduate C.W. program. Stevens has authored eight books of poetry, including, Combing the Snakes from His Hair, Mohawk/Samoa: Transmigrations, A Bridge Dead in the Water, The Mutual Life, Bulle/Chimere, DisOrient, and The Golden Book, (SplitLevel Texts). He is a 2000 Whiting Award recipient and Full Professor in IAIA’s undergraduate Creative Writing Program. He lives in Cañoncito, New Mexico.

June Beck is a writer, photographer, and mixed-media artist. His work centers on indigenous experience and queer methodologies. His poetry has previously appeared in the Adroit Journal and ALOCASIA.

Laura S. Ten Fingers is a Lakota writer, scholar, and teacher from the Oglála Band of the Thítȟuŋwaŋ on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Her work is rooted in Lakota culture, spirituality, and ancestral storytelling traditions. She explores memory, identity, and Indigenous identity through writing and visual language. Laura holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Cinematic Arts and Technology from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Marvin Garbeh Davis, Sr. is a Liberian writer and poet whose fiction and poetry examine the intersection of memory, labor, faith and the human condition. His work draws richly from plantation histories, river communities and Liberia’s shifting landscapes. He lives with his wife Angea in Monrovia, Liberia.

Noelani Piters is a writer living in San Francisco. A recipient of fellowships from Indigenous Nations Poets, VONA, and PEN America, she was a finalist for the 2025 James Welch Prize and the 2024 Disquiet Literary Prize in poetry. Noelani was a 2023 Molokai Arts Center Artist in Residence and has received scholarships and support from Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and Kearny Street Workshop. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming from Zyzzyva, Poetry Northwest, The Hopkins Review, Poetry, swamp pink, Pleiades, and elsewhere.