SWAIA and Collected Works Bookstore are proud to present a collaborative reading series featuring award winning Native writers. SWAIA is continually expanding its educational programs to encompass a broader landscape of Native expression. This ambitious literary series and other yearlong educational programs will provide greater opportunities for Native artists to represent themselves to the world and build lasting relationships, positively reinforcing and redefining Native identity. Layli Long Soldier holds a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a two-time recipient of the Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship. She is also a recipient of the 2009 Naropa University Poetry Scholarship. She has served as editor-in-chief for "Native Language Network" and other publications for the Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe, NM. She is also lead guitarist and vocalist for M=Water and a writer/assistant editor for Rockwired Magazine. Her first chapbook of poetry is titled, Chromosomory (Q Ave Press, 2009). James Thomas Stevens was born in Niagara Falls, New York in 1966. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts and The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa, and received his MFA from Brown University. Stevens is the author of A Bridge Dead in the Water, Combing the Snakes from His Hair, Bulle/Chimère, Mohawk/Samoa:Transmigrations with Caroline Sinavaiana, Of Kingdoms and Kangaroo with Nicolas Destino and (dis)Orient. He is a member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and teaches Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Stevens lives in Lamy, New Mexico.