Arizona Humanities is kicking off Native American Heritage Month on Wednesday, Nov. 1, with an online panel of Indigenous authors.
Dine’ poet Kinsale Drake will moderate the free, virtual session, which includes three Indigenous children’s authors: Dawn Quigley, Brian Young and Traci Sorrell.
“I run NDN Girls Book Club, an organization that gets free books out to Native youth and does workshops with Native youth,” Drake said. “We’ve shared a lot of their books with tribal libraries. We recently had an open mic at ASU, and it had a really great turnout, so I think people really are hungry for more Indigenous literature.”
Drake says the audience will include educators, students, writers and avid readers, and the format for the session will be part presentation, part Q&A.
“I hope to ask why it’s important that curricula contain contemporary Indigenous authors, how they see Indigenous literature lending itself to the classroom,” said Drake. “I also want to talk to them as writers. I think for the students, most importantly, how they got started writing, what inspires them to keep writing?”
The webinar runs from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Sign up via AZ Humanities.