Kimberly Blaeser in conversation with Christopher Diaz

Kimberly Blaeser, former Wisconsin poet laureate, is the founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light, a 2026 National Book Foundation Science + Literature title; Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance; and Copper Yearning, winner of the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award. Other awards include the O. Henry Prize in fiction, Writer for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Blaeser is Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, who grew up on the reservation in northern Minnesota. She is an MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts and a Professor Emerita at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Learn more at www.kblaeser.org

Christopher Sablan Diaz is an indigenous CHamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan. He’s been featured by NBC News and Poets & Writers.org, and was recently shortlisted for the 2026 Poet of the Year Award by ONLY POEMS literary magazine. He’s received fellowships and support from Indigenous Nations Poets, Kundiman, the McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House), the Washington State Arts Commission, and the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology. He's a two-time grand slam champion and has taught with “Writers in the Schools.” He lives on the unceded ancestral lands of the Chinook in Vancouver, WA, where he volunteers to co-facilitate writing workshops at the juvenile detention center.