Award-winning poet Santee Frazier reads from his collected works at Scripps College on Wednesday, February 23 as part of the Scripps Writing Program. Sponsored by the Mary Routt Chair of Writing David Treuer, this free event begins at 5:30 pm in Vita Nova 100.
A citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Frazier holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Syracuse University. The recipient of various awards including The Truman Capote Scholarship, Syracuse University Fellowship and two Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowships, his poems appear American Poet, Narrative Magazine, Ontario Review, Ploughshares, and other prominent literary journals.
Praised for its raw honesty and fresh look at the world, Frazier’s first collection of poems, Dark Thirty (University of Arizona Press 2009), takes readers on a loosely autobiographical trip through Cherokee country, the backwoods towns and the big cities, giving readers clear-eyed portraits of Native people surviving contemporary America. The poems in Dark Thirty address poverty, alcoholism, cruelty, and homelessness—subjects that are not often thought of as “poetic.”
Frazier was also recently honored by The School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico as recipient of SAR Indigenous Writer in Residence title. On February 17, he was joined there by Treuer for a reading and discussion.
The reading will be followed by a book signing, with copies of Dark Thirty available for purchase. For more information, contact the Scripps Writing Program at (909) 607-3250.