I’m thrilled to be hosting two extraordinary Indigenous poets for September’s edition of What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading Series:

Mary Leauna Christensen, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, received her PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi and currently teaches at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her poetry can be found in the Southern Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, and the Gettysburg Review, among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in the Common and in Black Warrior Review. She was named a 2022 Indigenous Nations Poets fellow for the inaugural In-Na-Po retreat and was selected as a returning fellow for 2023 and 2025. Mary Leauna has also been awarded the Fireweed Fellowship for Indigenous women writers under 40 to attend the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska in 2025.

Kalehua Kim is a poet living in the Pacific Northwest. Born of Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese descent, her multicultural background informs much of her work. She is a 2023 winner of the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets and earned her MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, Calyx, and ‘Ōiwi, A Native Hawaiian Journal. As a recipient of the 2024 Trio House Press Editor’s Choice Prize, her first collection of poems, Mele, was released by Trio House in 2025.

You will be dazzled by these poets and their poems! Register at bit.ly/WTUISep2025 right now!