Visiting Writers
Heid E. Erdrich
Heid E. Erdrich is an independent curator, editor, teacher, and Native American Studies scholar. She is Ojibwe, enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Heid is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her honors include a National Poetry Series award, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship, Loft-McKnight Fellowship in Prose, Minnesota State Arts Board grants, and two Minnesota Book Awards. Heid edited the anthology New Poets of Native Nations from Graywolf Press, Minneapolis. Her poetry collection, Little Big Bully was a National Poetry Series award winner and it won the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. Along with Minnesota Poet Laureate Gwen Nell Westerman, Heid is a scholar-editor for Minnesota Humanities Center. She serves on the board of the national organization Indigenous Nations Poets (IN-NA-PO. Her mixed genre book, Verb Animate: Poetry and Prompts from Collaborative Acts, is just out from Minneapolis press Trio House. In 2024, Heid served as the inaugural Minneapolis poet laureate. Her co-edited book, Boundless: Abundance in Native American Art and Literature, is forthcoming in 2025. Heid is the 2025 James and Lois Welch Distinguished Native American Visiting Writer at Ñý¼§Ö±²¥ Missoula.
Amy Leach
Amy Leach is the author of The Salt of the Universe, The Everybody Ensemble, and Things That Are. She grew up in Texas and earned her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and numerous other publications, including Granta, A Public Space, Orion, Tin House, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a Pushcart Prize.
Maxim Loskutoff
Maxim Loskutoff was raised in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana. He published his first story at nineteen and his debut collection COME WEST AND SEE won the High Plains Book Award, was a NY Times Editor’s Choice, and an NPR and Amazon Best Book. His debut novel RUTHIE FEAR won the Montana Innovation Award and the High Plains Book Award, received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, and Booklist, and was a Reading the West Award Finalist. His second novel OLD KING was published in June 2024 and named a Best Book of Summer by the Boston Globe and Minneapolis Star Tribune, and a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Publisher's Weekly. The recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell, his writing has appeared in the NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, GQ, and many other magazines.