Bojan Louis, Sinking Bell, with IAIA Faculty & Students

This will be an in-store presentation and we will live stream the evening on Zoom, please register to watch here.

If you are attending in person, for your safety and those around you, we will be requiring all audience members wear a mask.

Bojan Louis, Sinking Bell

Set in and around Flagstaff, the stories in Sinking Bell depict violent collisions of love, cultures, and racism. In his gritty and searching fiction debut, Bojan Louis draws empathetic portraits of day laborers, metalheads, motel managers, aspiring writers and musicians, construction workers, people passing through with the hope of something better somewhere else. His characters strain to temper predatory or self-destructive impulses; they raise families, choose families, and abandon families; they endeavor to end cycles of abuse and remake themselves anew.

Bojan Louis is Diné of the Naakai dine’é, born for the Áshííhí. He is the author of a book of poetry, Currents, which received an American Book Award. He has been a resident at MacDowell. He teaches creative writing at the University of Arizona.

Purchase signed copies (after the event) online or by calling the store (505) 988-4226

Breath Rift from Carey Powers, chronicles, through blood memory and imprint, a history of traumas, disconnections, neglect, and violence. Gravitating, cyclic, told in couplets, Breath Rift constructs of a weaving of sound meant to hold and celebrate a life so ritually compromised, a woman who survived. Motherhood, colonial history, the violence women and girls experience, family lineage and the power of language are the collection's constant undercurrents.

A graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts’ MFA Program in Creative Writing, Carey Powers is the author of the poetry collection, Breath Rift (2021). Her poems and stories have appeared in Sonder, Parallax, and Faultline. Currently working on her second book, she also teaches creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2021, she co-organized Hurleyville Performing Arts Centre’s “Nature Speaks” poetry reading, and was a Youth Outreach Fellow for Santa Fe Public Schools’ NASS program in 2019. She is a strong supporter of emerging voices in poetry and literature and will pursue this passion through many upcoming community projects. She lives in Santa Fe, NM with her friends and family.

About the Moderator

Deborah Jackson Taffa is the director of the MFA CW program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Winner of the PEN Jean Stein Grant, her memoir Whiskey Tender is forthcoming in 2023. A recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Tin House, Public Space, Rona Jaffe, and Kranzberg Arts Center, she is a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo. She earned her MFA in Iowa City.

About Brianna G. Reed

Raised in Hope Mills, North Carolina, Brianna G. Reed is a Diné writer currently attending the Institute of American Indian Arts. She has authored various short stories, essays, and poetry that have appeared within Leonardo and the Tribal College Journal. She now heads her own column, "Moccasin Millennial," which can be found at the tribalcollegejournal.org.