January 18, 2026 – Virtual

Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is the author of works in several genres. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light, Copper Yearning, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Blaeser’s honors include the 2025 Poets & Writers’ Writer for Writers Award, Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. An enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee, and MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts.  For more information visit: http://kblaeser.org

 

Shannon K. Winston is the author of The Worry Dolls (Glass Lyre Press, 2025) and The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press, 2021). Her individual poems have appeared in Bracken, Cider Press Review, the Los Angeles Review, RHINO Poetry, SWWIM Every Day, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MFA in poetry from The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She currently works at Indiana University and lives in Bloomington, Indiana with her family.