Countdown to the 5th Annual Taos Writer's Conference!
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Luci Tapahonso
Keynote Speaker, 5th Annual Taos Writer’s Conference
Friday, 7/23/21 at 7pm MT
Luci Tapahonso is Professor Emerita of English Literature (University of New Mexico 2016) and served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Navajo Nation. She is a recipient of a 2018 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Artist Fellowship.
She is the author of three children’s books and six books of poetry including A Radiant Curve. She recently served as a judge for Poetry Out Loud, the New Mexico High School Poetry Competition and was selected as “2016 Best of the City- Our City and State’s Prolific Authors,” by Albuquerque the Magazine. Professor Tapahonso has delivered keynote addresses at several conferences and institutions including Harvard University, Gallup Central High School, Kenyon College, Institute of American Indian Arts, the Tbisili International Literature Festival in the Republic of Georgia and “Creativity Week” at the University of New Zealand at Auckland and Wellington.
She recently completed a script for an exhibition called “Creating Tradition: Innovation and Change in American Indian Art” for the American Heritage Gallery at Walt Disney World’s Epcot and is completing the manuscript for her next book.
Luci Tapahonso lives in Santa Fe with her husband, Dr. Robert Martin, who is president of the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Kirk Wallace Johnson
Dates TBD for Spring, 2022
Friday night reading
Saturday 9am-noon workshop
Kirk Wallace Johnson is a screenwriter and author. He is the creator of Drug Spies, a scripted series about pharmaceutical espionage, and his books include The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind, and The Fishermen and the Dragon: Two Dreams at War Off the Texas Coast (forthcoming from Viking Press). He is also the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies.
His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy, among others.
Prior to founding the List Project, Johnson served in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad and then Fallujah as the Agency’s first coordinator for reconstruction in the war-torn city.
He is a a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and the recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Wurlitzer Foundation. Prior to his work in Iraq, he conducted research on political Islamism as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt. He received his BA from the University of Chicago in 2002.
Carmen Agra Deedy
Headliner, 2022 Storytelling Festival
Saturday, 10/15/22, at 7pm MT
Earlier on Saturday, Deedy will lead a workshop on the craft of storytelling
Carmen Agra Deedy is the author of twelve books for children, including The Library Dragon, The Cheshire Cheese Cat, Martina the Beautiful Cockroach, The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet! and 14 Cows for America, a New York Times Bestseller. Rita and Ralph’s Rotten Day! (Scholastic Press) was released in 2020. Her personal stories first appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered. Funny, insightful, and frequently irreverent, Deedy’s narratives are culled from her childhood as a Cuban refugee in Decatur, Georgia. She is host of the four-time Emmy-winning children’s program, Love That Book!
An award-winning author and storyteller, Deedy is also an accomplished lecturer, having been a guest speaker for both the TED and TEDx Conferences, the Library of Congress, Columbia University, the National Book Festival, and the Kennedy Center, among other distinguished venues. A life-long supporter of the institution, she opened the 2016 Art of the Book Lecture Series for the Smithsonian Libraries.
Deedy was appointed a member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board in October 2019.
Her newest picture book, The Children’s Moon (Scholastic Press), illustrated by Jim LaMarche, is projected to be released in 2021.
Poet Laureate
The Poet Laureate initiative, created in 2018 by SOMOS in conjunction with the Town of Taos, raises awareness of Taos as a national center for the contemporary literary arts. Catherine Strisik is our second laureate. She will serve throughout 2020 and 2021.
Upcoming Events
Open Tues-Fri 12pm-4pm 575.758.0081 108 Civic Plaza Drive
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 3225, Taos, NM 87571
THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS
SOMOS programs are made possible in part by these organizations: New Mexico Arts • Taos Community Foundation • The McCune Foundation • The National Endowment For The Arts • The Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation • The Peter And Madeleine Martin Foundation for the Arts • The Santa Fe Community Foundation • Taos County Lodgers Tax • The Richard B. Siegel Foundation • TaosNetLLC for high speed internet service • LANL (Los Alamos National Labs) • New Mexico Humanities Council