ISU Hosts Visiting Writer Beth Piatote February 23-24

Creative Writing at ISU is pleased to announce that acclaimed writer and scholar Beth Piatote will visit ISU February 23-24.

Piatote is a scholar of Native American literature and law; a multi-genre creative writer; and an Indigenous language revitalization activist, specializing in Nez Perce language and literature. During her time here, Piatote will hold a craft class in playwriting for ISU students, visit with students at Chief Tahgee Elementary Academy on Fort Hall Reservation, and give a public reading of her creative work.

Piatote’s playwriting class on Monday, February 23, 11 a.m. in the Rendezvous Suites is open to all interested ISU students. All levels of creative writing experience are welcome, including none.

Piatote’s reading on Tuesday, February 24, 5 p.m. in the Stephens Performing Arts Center’s Black Box Theatre, is free, and the public is welcome to attend. Copies of Piatote’s collection The Beadworkers: Stories will be available for sale and signing after the reading. Kirkus Reviews describes The Beadworkers as “a poignant and challenging look at the way the past and present collide.” It includes short stories that center around Native experiences in the Northwest, as well as the verse play “Antíkoni,” which adapts Sophocles’ Antigone to address the issue of museum possession of Native ancestral remains. The Beadworkers was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, has been featured on NPR, and has been selected as a “one read” for several communities.

Born in Denver, Piatote grew up in Aberdeen, Idaho, and is now an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley. She is also the author of the scholarly monograph Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and the Law in Native American Literature (Yale 2013), and her poetry collection distant water is forthcoming from Milkweed in May. Piatote is Nez Perce, enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

Piatote’s visit is sponsored by the Department of English and Philosophy, the Department of Theatre and Dance, and Black Rock and Sage, ISU’s student journal of creative works.