Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden appointed Joy Harjo as the 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress on June 19, 2019. Harjo is the first Native American to serve in the position; she is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951, and is the author of nine books of poetry, including her latest, “An American Sunrise: Poems” (Norton, 2019); “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings” (2015) “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky” (1994), which received the Oklahoma Book Arts Award; and “In Mad Love and War” (1990), which received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. Harjo has also written a memoir, “Crazy Brave” (2012), which won the 2013 PEN Center USA literary prize for creative nonfiction, and the children’s book “The Good Luck Cat” (2000) and young adult book “For a Girl Becoming” (2009).
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