Join Joy Harjo for a reading and conversation as she is presented with the Denise Levertov Award on March 5 at 7:30 p.m. at the Quick Center. In partnership with the quarterly arts journal Image, this free event is sponsored by the MFA in Creative Writing program with support from the Fairfield University Arts Institute. Registration is required.
The 23rd U.S. poet laureate and member of the Muscogee Nation, Harjo the author of ten books of poetry, several plays, children’s books, two memoirs, and seven music albums. Her honors include Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and the inaugural artist-in-residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.
“We are so pleased to host Joy Harjo as part of our new partnership with Image literary journal,” said Carol Ann Davis, professor of English and director of Fairfield’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program. “At the Fairfield MFA we seek to support, sustain, and extend the Jesuit ideal of developing the writer as a whole person within a community committed to justice, honest expression, and beauty. So, it's pleasing and especially apt that Joy Harjo, who writes that ‘every soul has a distinct song,’ and elsewhere that ‘we are here to create, to bring beauty into the world,’ will receive the Levertov Award from Image magazine for lifetime achievement in arts and faith at our very own Quick Center.”
The College of Arts and Sciences, in partnership with Image, will host this literary event at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on Wednesday, March 5 at 7:30 p.m. The publishers of Image will present Harjo with the 2025 Denise Levertov Award, which according to the journal’s website, “is given annually to an artist, musician, or writer whose work exemplifies a serious and sustained engagement with faith.” Harjo is the 18th Levertov Award recipient; past awardees include Marilyn Nelson, Carolyn Forché, and Richard Rodriguez. A brief book signing will follow the presentation.
This evening at Fairfield with Joy Harjo is part of the Inspired Writers Series, which serves as a companion to the MFA in Creative Writing program, offering engaging discussions with top authors. Designed to inform, inspire, and entertain, the series provides invaluable insight for writers while welcoming all participants into thought-provoking literary conversations.
