Joy Harjo, Harvey Fellow

Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. She is the first Native American to hold this position, and only the sec­ond poet to be appoint­ed a third term, from 2019 through 2022. 

Woman standing, facing the camera, in red satin shirt and long beaded earrings

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer, the author of ten books of poetry, plays, children’s books, memoirs, works of nonfiction, and several music albums. She earned her BA from the University of New Mexico and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work is often autobiographical, informed by politics, tradition, remembrance, and often centered on the natural world.

Among her many honors are Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, 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 and Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

About the Fellowship

The André Harvey Creative Fellowship at Longwood Gardens honors André’s legacy of spreading joy and appreciation through art by giving creative people the opportunity to immerse themselves in acres of beauty and to explore the themes of the natural world.

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To read the poetry of Joy Harjo is to hear the voice of the earth, to see the landscape of time and timelessness, and, most important, to get a glimpse of people who struggle to understand, to know themselves, and to survive.

Poetry Foundation

Her first memoir Crazy Brave won several awards including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction and the American Book Award. Her second memoir, Poet Warrior is a wise follow-up that reveals how she came to write poetry of compassion and healing. Her newest memoir, Girl Warrior: A Coming of Age Handbook will be published in October 2025.

She is executive editor of the anthology When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through — A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, and she is editor of her companion anthology to her signature Poet Laureate project Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, that fea­tur­es work by 47 Native Nations poets.

Joy Harjo has given the world a powerful voice for Indigenous storytelling. According to Joy, “storytelling is who we are.” As a poet, musician, and activist, she invites us to pause, listen and recognize the connections between all living things.