Amarillo College will welcome internationally renowned poet, storyteller, musician, and playwright Joy Harjo for a public lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, in the AC Concert Hall Theatre at AC’s Washington Street Campus, as part of the Creative Mind Lecture Series, sponsored by the Amarillo College Foundation. “Joy Harjo’s work speaks across generations and disciplines — poetry, music, history, and lived experience,” said Chris Hudson, professor of English and director of Amarillo College’s Creative Mind Lecture Series. “Her voice challenges us to listen more deeply to one another and to the stories that shape who we are. We are honored to welcome her to Amarillo College and to share this extraordinary evening with our students and community.” Harjo, a member of the Muscogee Nation, is one of the most influential literary voices of her generation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019–2022 and is the recipient of numerous national honors, including the Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Frost Medal, Yale University’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and a National Humanities Medal. She is the author of 11 books of poetry, including Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years; several plays; children’s books; nonfiction works; and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior. Her many accolades also include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to her literary achievements, Harjo is an accomplished musician and performer who has produced seven award-winning albums, including her most recent release, I Pray for My Enemies. She has edited three major anthologies of Native literature, including When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, Reinventing the Enemy’s Language, and Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, the companion volume to her signature Poet Laureate project. She holds the Ruth Yellowhawk Fellowship from the Kettering Foundation and is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Harjo lives on the Muscogee Nation Reservation in Oklahoma. The Creative Mind Lecture Series brings nationally and internationally recognized artists and thinkers to Amarillo College to engage the community in conversations about creativity, culture and the human experience. The lecture is free and open to the public.