Join us in celebrating the diversity and richness of local and worldwide indigenous and ancient languages. Enjoy videos of readings and copies of writings from writers throughout the world about the importance of language visibility.

Acompáñanos a celebrar la diversidad de las lenguas indígenas y ancestrales locales y mundiales. Disfruta de lecturas de escritores locales y copias de escritos en varios idiomas que entablan conversaciones sobre la importancia de la visibilidad de lenguajes.

Michaela Paulette Shirley

Michaela Paulette Shirley (Diné), MCRP, identifies with the Water Edge and Bitter Water clans, with her maternal grandfather from the Salt clan and her paternal grandfather from the Coyote Pass clan. She was raised in Kin Dah Lichii in northeastern Arizona on the Navajo reservation. With over ten years of experience in Indigenous planning, community development, community engagement, qualitative research, conference planning, and technical assistance training and workshops, she is now serving as the KSU Tribal TAB Program Manager. Currently, Michaela is pursuing a PhD in the UNM American Studies Department.

• Speaking Notes

Àkpà Árinzèchukwu

Àkpà Árinzèchukwu is a 2023 Oxbelly Writing Retreat Fellow, a winner of the 2021 Poetry Archive Worldview Prize, a Best of the Net nominee, Pushcart, and Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, shortlisted for the FT/Bodley Head Prize, and a finalist for the 2020 Black Warrior Review Fiction Prize, his works appear in Kenyon Review, Adda, Transition, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the curator of Muqabalal, a bilingual conversation series, co-host of Muqabalal’s Poem a Day in Translation, and the Church of Poetry.

• Speaking Notes