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United States Poet Laureate and winner of the 2022 Academy of American Poets Leadership Award, Joy Harjo, joins us for a chat about her most recent memoir, Catching the Light and to discuss her rewarding lifetime as a writer and poet.

In Catching the Light, Harjo examines the power of words and how poetry summons us toward justice and healing. In this lyrical meditation about the why of writing poetry, Harjo reflects on significant points of illumination, experience, and questioning from her fifty years as a poet. Comprised of intimate vignettes that take us through the author’s life journey as a youth in the late 1960s, a single mother, and a champion of Native nations, this book offers a fresh understanding of how poetry functions as an expression of purpose, spirit, community, and memory.

This series is presented in collaboration with the Library Speakers Consortium.