Joy Harjo and Larry Mitchell will be performing at Northwest College's Annual Native American Heritage Month Celebration and Feast. The activities begin at 10 a.m. on Nov. 8, and includes a library display presentation by Harjo. Harjo and Mitchell will have lunch with the Writing and Literary Guild (a student club), and then visit selected classes on the NWC campus. At 5 p.m. the Buffalo Feast dinner takes place in the DeWitt Student Center Lounge. Harjo, the guest speaker will discuss the significance of Native American Heritage Month and the Buffalo Feast. 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. is the writer's series presentation in the NPA Auditorium, where Harjo will read poetry, followed by Harjo and Mitchell giving a musical performance. Following this performance, Harjo and Mitchell will be signing books and their cd and will have one-on-one discussions.Joy Harjo was born in 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma as a member of the Muscogee Tribe. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the University of New Mexico, earning her B. A. She then attended the Iowa Writers Workshop, earning her M. F. A. Her books include How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems (2002); A Map to the Next World (2000); The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994); In Mad Love and War (1990); Secrets from the Center of the World (1989); She Had Some Horses (1983); and What Moon Drove Me to This (1979). Along with Patricia Blanco, Beth Cuthand, and Valerie Martinez, Harjo edited Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America (1997).
In addition to working with Native American issues, Harjo shares concerns with indigenous and Third World people globally. Her love of jazz led her to the alto sax and the forming of her band Poetic Justice. She has recorded three CDs of her work: Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century (1997); Native Joy for Real (2004); and She Had Some Horses (2006).
Harjo has won the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and fellowships from the Arizona Arts Commission, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. As a teacher, Harjo has been a frequent leader of workshops and has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, the University of Colorado, and the University of Arizona. She divides her time between Honolulu and Albuquerque.
Larry Mitchell has performed with a wide range of artists; his latest collaboration before working with Joy Harjo was with Native American artist Shelley Morningsong. In 1986 and 1987 Mitchell won the New York City Limelight guitar solo contest. In 1988, he toured with Spanish/Italian artist Miguel Bose. He's toured and worked with Folk pop singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman, T. M. Stevens, and Sandra Bernard. Other notable performances include the Jon Stewart show with Coolio, Montel Jordan, Pete Rock, and C. L. Smooth. He's also won a vast range of awards, including his most recentm with the New Mexico Music Awards.
