Tacey M. Atsitty

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta'neeszahnii (Tangle People). Atsitty has published the poetry collections (At) Wrist (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023), winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, and Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018), as well as the chapbook Amenorrhea (Counting Coup Press, 2009). Her work has appeared in journals including Poetry, EPOCH, Kenyon Review, and Prairie Schooner, as well as the anthology When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (WW Norton, 2020). 

She is the director of the Navajo Film Festival, a board member of Lightscatter Press, and a founding member of the Intermountain All-Women Hoop Dance Competition board of directors at This Is the Place Heritage Park. She received a Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, Corson-Browning Poetry Prize, Morning Star Creative Writing Award, and Philip Freund Prize. 

Atsitty is a PhD student in creative writing at Florida State University. She earned her bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University and the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. She was born in Logan, Utah, and grew up in Kirtland, New Mexico, and is originally from Cove, Arizona.