Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, to a Mexican father and Native-American mother. She attended Old Dominion University on a full athletic scholarship and played point guard on the university’s basketball team. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree, she played professional basketball in Europe and Asia before returning to Old Dominion University for an MFA in poetry and fiction. At the time, Diaz used poetry to explore why she wants certain things and why she is afraid of others, reflecting her upbringing in the reservation. She published her poems in various magazines, and in 2012, at the age of 34, she published her first book- When My Brother Was an Aztec. In this award-winning poem collection, she portrayed her experiences as a Native American woman and focused on her brother’s crystal meth addiction. In 2020, at 40, Diaz published her second collection- Postcolonial Love Poem, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry – the first Latina woman to receive the award. In her poetry, Diaz blends personal, cultural, and political references to challenge contemporary American perception. Another interest of Diaz is preserving Native languages, believing that they are the foundation of the American poetic lexicon. As the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program Director, she works with the last speakers of the Mojave language to document and revitalize the language. Diaz serves as the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She is a faculty member of the CantoMundo Retreat and the Board of Trustees for the United States Artists. In 2021, at the age of 43, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Read more...