Flood Song
Sherwin Bitsui
Friday, 29 Mar 2013 at 4:00 pm – Pioneer Room, Memorial Union
Sherwin Bitsui is the author of two books of poetry, Shapeshift and Flood Song, a recipient of a 2010 PEN Open Book Award and an American Book Award. Originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, he is Dine of the Todich'ii'nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl'izilani (Many Goats Clan). His work explores the tensions between the worlds of nature and man as well as the challenge Native Americans face in reconciling an inherited history of lore and spirit with a postmodern civilization. Bitsui's many honors include a 2011 Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a 2011 Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship and a Whiting Writers Award. The 9th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Environmental Imagination: The Future of WaterSherwin Bitsui's poems have been published in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT, and elsewhere. They were also anthologized in Between Water & Song, Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. He holds a BA from University of Arizona and an AFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
The Future of Water is a series of invited lectures, creative readings, interdisciplinary panel discussions and a documentary film about the secret life and turbulent future of the world’s fresh and salt water supplies.
Cosponsored By:
- Bioethics Program
- Center for Excellence in the Arts & Humanities
- College of Design
- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Ecology, Evolution & Organismal Biology
- Geological & Atmospheric Sciences
- Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture
- History
- LAS Miller Lecture Fund
- Landscape Architecture
- Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
- MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment
- Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture
- Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government)
Stay for the entire event, including the brief question-and-answer session that follows the formal presentation. Most events run 75 minutes.
Sign-ins are after the event concludes. For lectures in the Memorial Union, go to the information desk in the Main Lounge. In other academic buildings, look for signage outside the auditorium.
Lecture Etiquette
- Stay for the entire lecture and the brief audience Q&A. If a student needs to leave early, he or she should sit near the back and exit discreetly.
- Do not bring food or uncovered drinks into the lecture.
- Check with Lectures staff before taking photographs or recording any portion of the event. There are often restrictions. Cell phones, tablets and laptops may be used to take notes or for class assignments.
- Keep questions or comments brief and concise to allow as many as possible.