Originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, Sherwin Bitsui is the author of three collections of poetry, Dissolve (Copper Canyon, 2018), Flood Song (Copper Canyon), and Shapeshift (University of Arizona Press). He is Diné of the Todí¬ch’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizí¬laaní¬ (Many Goats Clan) and holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program and a BA from University of Arizona in Tucson. His recent honors include a 2011 Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a 2011 Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship. He is also the recipient of 2010 PEN Open Book Award, an American Book Award, and a Whiting Writers Award. Bitsui has published his poems in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT, and elsewhere.
Steeped in Native American culture, mythology, and history, Bitsui’s poems reveal the tensions in the intersection of Native American and contemporary urban culture. As an ecopoet, his poems are imagistic, surreal, and rich with details of the landscape of the Southwest.