The Northern Arizona Book Festival will include Diné, Hopi authors and publishers

By Navajo Times

FLAGSTAFF – The Northern Arizona Book Festival returns in April.

The festival starts Friday, April 5, and ends Monday, April 15, with in-person and online events and activities for all ages. Local and regional author readings, poetry slams, workshops, and live performances for all ages will be held in multiple venues across Flagstaff, downtown’s Heritage Square, and via Zoom.

Admission to all festival events is free and open to the public.

The festival will present a multitude of different authors and literary presses in a walkable downtown festival with in-person events and performances. It will feature readers from some of the best authors, publishers, poets, and writers from all over the Southwest, across the county, and locally from Flagstaff and Mohave, Coconino, Yavapai, Apache, and Navajo counties.

Participants include the Emerging Diné Writers’ Institute based at Navajo Technical University; the Abalone Mountain Press in Tuba City; the Chapter House Journal (Institute of American Indian Arts); and Mesa Media, whose mission is to promote the Hopi language and Hopi authors.

“Our book festival features Indigenous-centric performances, zine making, translation slams, haiku death matches, literary-themed fun runs, text galleries, humor writing, children’s story time, youth poetry leadership, installation art, and guided eco-poetic workshops, among other things,” Northern Arizona Book Festival Executive Director Lawrence Lenhart said. “By thinking outside of the book, we … can collaborate with and invest in all forms of literary infrastructure across the Colorado Plateau.”

The festival begins with a local author signing at Bright Side Bookshop on April 5, leading up to the more extensive literary weekend. The agenda includes a literary bike ride and poetry tour through Northern Arizona University’s campus titled “Spoke N Word” on April 7; all-ages poetry open mic at Awa Kava & Coffee on Monday, April 8; a 21-plus open mic for writers at Flagstaff Brewery Company on Tuesday, April 9; and an all-ages Flagstaff Poetry Slam – Arizona’s longest running poetry slam now in its 24th year – on Wednesday, April 10.

“Every year has turned out to be so surprising with what comes together,” Northern Arizona Book Festival President Margarita Cruz said, “whether it is traditional readings, translation slams, jazz and poetry open mic, yoga meditations led by writers for writers,

“Humor writing contests, writing workshops, panels with publishers, conversations with poet laureates, literary installations, youth-led workshops, zine-making among community,” Cruz said. “Celebrations of Indigenous writers and work, focus on environmental writing. All of it surprises me how much I learn or get to enjoy what others came out of the festival with.”

The festival continues Friday, April 12, with a welcome-back reading at 5 p.m. featuring poet Jodie Hollander, author and KNAU journalist Melissa Sevigny, and authors Erik Bitsui and M.S. Coe. The night ends with a reading from keynote reader Natalie Diaz, an Akimel O’odham poet and MacArthur Fellow whose book “Postcolonial Love Poem” won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and writers Stacey Denetsosie, Deborah Taffa, and Chelsea T. Hicks.

The festival will take over downtown Flagstaff throughout the day on Saturday, April 13, with over a dozen local publishers, maker workshops, and literary community organizations with ongoing live performances from poets, actors, artists, and musicians in Heritage Square, beginning at 10 a.m. Events include a reading with Salina Bookshelf and Mesa Media, a Haiku Death Match interactive competition with a cash prize open to any haiku poet, a Youth Poetry Council event, creative writing with Diné College professor Shaina Nez, and a reading by the Bird in Your Hands Prize hosted by “Thin Air Magazine,” the Northern Arizona University MFA in Creative Writing literary magazine.

“The diversity of presenters and the innovation of the programming is special,” festival board secretary Will Cordeiro said. “We have many programs focusing on young readers, Indigenous literature, and the environmental humanities, for example. We have events that are hands-on, performative, or immersive. We offer various workshops, from crafting zines to using AI to generate work. We have slams and ‘haiku death matches.’ We have book-centric events staged as trail runs. We sponsor translation forums, chances to meet editors from national magazines, and a giant book fair with publishers from all over the Southwest in Heritage Square.”

Events at other locations in Flagstaff include the NDN Girl Book Club and Abalone Mountain event for small publishers, an Indigenous-centric publishing panel, a translation event, and an event with Cree author and poet Billy-Ray Belcourt, an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. For the second year, the festival will also include the competitive Sedona Poetry Slam at the Mary D. Fisher Theater in West Sedona, featuring Briana Grace Hammerstrom, a Portland poet who formerly ran the Flagstaff Poetry Slam.

“I first attended the Northern Arizona Book Festival in 2017, and I was absolutely blown away that in this area of the Southwest, literary endeavors were celebrated so largely and so differently than other organizations,” Cruz said. “This festival is really a festival for writers to interact with one another on a level that is so different from what we see in other spaces.”

Events continue on Sunday, April 14, with “Book It,” a fun run book drive for active literary types, starting at the Flagstaff Public Library at 9 a.m.; a story time and kids’ reading at Bright Side Bookshop; a feedback workshop, and “Pop Goes the Ferret,” a cowpunk fantasia light operetta created by Lenhart and Will Cordeiro. Starring Christine Graham and Nathanael Johnson, with a libretto by Lenhart and Cordeiro, the tale is based on Lenhart’s nonfiction environmental book “Backvalley Ferrets,” chronicling the unprecedented return of the black-footed ferret, which was twice declared extinct. The event ends with virtual readings and workshops from the Macondo Writers’ Workshop based out of San Antonio in the first-ever collaboration with the Macondo organization.

“Whether it’s a new opera, a feedback forum for your writing, or a variety show of humor and songs, there’s something for everyone,” Cordeiro said. “We include internationally famous writers along with local authors and open mics. We try to be a place where many of the region’s literary and arts organizations can connect.

“It’s not just a book festival in the traditional sense of panels, lectures, and readings,” he added, “though, of course, we have plenty of those, too. It’s a place where the whole array of the region’s arts and culture can be celebrated, shared, and exchanged within our community.”

With over 30 events in one weekend, events not listed here are also available on noazbookfest.org.

“This festival celebrates writing as an experience that happens inside and outside of ourselves, on the page and off the page, all while really uplifting the writers already existing in the Southwest and from this land we call the Colorado Plateau,” Cruz said.

Information: Lenhart or Cruz, noazbookfest@gmail.com.

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