MN Writers Series: The Sky Watched

Author and poet Linda LeGarde Grover will be joining the Minnesota Writers Series for a special offsite event in Duluth for Poetry Month. In addition to reading selections from her recently re-released collection, The Sky Watched: Poems of Ojibwe Lives (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), Grover will also join in conversation with Dr. Jill M. Doerfler, head of American Indian Studies at University of Minnesota-Duluth, about the joys and complexities of leading a life devoted to writing and poetry, and the ways in which poetry has connected her further to her Native culture. Co-sponsored by the American Indian Community Housing Organization, also the host site for this event. About the book: The Sky Watched is a collective memoir in poetry of an Ojibwe family and tribal community, from creation myth to this day, updated with new poems. The collection gives poetic voice, in English and Ojibwe, those assembled here—voices of history, of memory and experience, of children and elders, Indian boarding school students, tribal storytellers, and the Manidoog, the unseen beings who surround our lives—come together to create a collective memoir in poetry as expansive and particular as the starry sky. About the author: Linda LeGarde Grover is professor emerita of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. Her books The Road Back to Sweetgrass, Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year, In the Night of Memory, and Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong, all from Minnesota, have earned numerous awards, including the Native Writers Circle of the Americas First Book Award; Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards for poetry, memoir, and fiction; and a Minnesota Book Award for memoir and creative nonfiction. Her book of stories The Dance Boots received the Flannery O’Connor Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. About the moderator: Jill Doerfler is a professor and department head of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Her primary area of scholarly interest is American Indian identity with a focus on Anishinaabe citizenship.