Esteemed poets Heid E. Erdrich and Eric Gansworth join visual artist Andrea Carlson in conversation to celebrate the release of Heid E. Erdrich’s latest, Little Big Bully (Penguin Group, 2020), and Eric Gansworth’s Apple: (skin to the Core) (Levine Querido, 2020), both out on October 6th, 2020. The longtime friends talk procrastination, expectations to act as cultural informants, and much more.

Interspersed throughout the discussion are readings from Little Big Bully and Apple: (skin to the Core).

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Heid E. Erdrich is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her writing has won fellowships and awards from the National Poetry Series, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Bush Foundation, Loft Literary Center, First People’s Fund, and other honors. She has twice won a Minnesota Book Award for poetry. Heid edited the 2018 anthology New Poets of Native Nations from Graywolf Press (2018). Heid grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota and is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain.

Eric Gansworth,  Sˑha-weñ na-saeˀ, (Onondaga, Eel Clan) is a writer and visual artist, born and raised at Tuscarora Nation. The author of twelve books, he has been widely published and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College, he has also been an NEH Distinguished Visiting Professor at Colgate University. Winner of a PEN Oakland Award and American Book Award, he is currently Longlisted for the National Book Award. Gansworth’s work has been also supported by the Library of Congress, the Saltonstall and Lannan Foundations, the Arne Nixon Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Seaside Institute.

Andrea Carlson is a visual artist currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Through painting and drawing, Carlson cites entangled cultural narratives and institutional authority relating to objects based on the merit of possession and display. Current research activities include Indigenous Futurism and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant recipient.