This fall’s salons will feature world-renowned writers Joy Harjo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Natasha Tretheway and Kimiko Hahn, who, between them, have held the title of United States Poet Laureate for seven years, among their many accolades.

“There are some things that only poets can do. And building community around sound and sense is one of those things,” said Fred Wherry, the Townsend Martin, Class of 1917 Professor of Sociology, and vice dean for diversity and inclusion in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty. “Now more than ever, we need these spaces to ponder and to connect.”

With an emphasis on becoming community, faculty and academic professionals engage with invited artists and one another in this spirited monthly series. All fall 2024 salons will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Prospect House. Spring 2025 dates and featured guests will be announced at a later time. The series is co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Faculty and the Office of the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity.

Fall 2024 Faculty Diversity Salons Schedule

Joy Harjo

Poet, musician, playwright and author

Friday, Sept. 6

A member of the Mvskoke Nation, Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019 to 2022 and won Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry and the Poetry Society of America's 2024 Frost Medal.

Harjo is the author of 10 books of poetry, several plays, children's books and two memoirs. Her many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. As a musician and performer, Harjo has produced seven award-winning music albums.

In addition to serving as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Harjo served as chair of the board of directors of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and is the first artist-in-residence for Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center. She lives on the Mvskoke Nation Reservation in Oklahoma.

Juan Felipe Herrera

Poet, performer, professor and author

Friday, Oct. 4

The son of farmworkers, California native Juna Felipe Herrera has dedicated his life to poetry, community, art and teaching. He served as poet laureate of California from 2012 to 2015 and the United States poet laureate from 2015 to 2017.

Herrera’s awards and honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, the Latino Hall of Fame Award and the UCLA Chancellor’s Medal, among others.

Herrera has taught Chicano and Latin American studies at California State University, Fresno, and creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, while also holding numerous visiting positions. He is the current Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio coordinator at the Fresno State Library.

Natasha Tretheway

Poet, professor and author

Friday, Nov. 1

A renowned poet, professor and author, Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States from 2012 to 2014 and as Mississippi’s Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2016. She is the author of many bestselling books, including “Native Guard,” for which she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize.

Tretheway has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Beinecke Library at Yale, and Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. In 2020, she received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry from the Library of Congress.

From 2015 to 2016, Tretheway served as poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she was elected to the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancelllors in 2019. Tretheway is currently a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University.

Kimiko Hahn

Poet, professor and author

Friday, Dec. 6

An esteemed poet, professor and author, Kimiko Hahn has authored 10 books of poetry, including “The Unbearable Heart,” winner of the 1996 American Book Award, and “Earshot,” winner of the 1995 Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and the 1993 Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award.

Hahn is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America, among numerous other accolades. She has been supported by fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. From 2016 to 2019, she served as president of the board of governors for the Poetry Society of America. In January 2023, Hahn was elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

She has taught in graduate programs at the University of Houston and New York University and is currently a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York. Her work is noted for its intertextuality and wide-ranging subject matter.