Photo by Denice Dotson, Lasting Impressions Photography

Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States and is a recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Frost Medal, Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and was recently honored with a National Humanities Medal.

Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States and is a recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Frost Medal, Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and was recently honored with a National Humanities Medal.

Awards

Winner — PEN/Open Book Award, 2002

Winner — Oklahoma Book Award, 2003

Winner — Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award, 2021

Longlisted — ALA Carnegie Medal, 2022

Winner — Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award, 2022

Winner — Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, 2023

Winner — Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award, 2023

Books by Joy Harjo

  • Poet Warrior: A Memoir

    Joy Harjo

    Paperback, 2022

    Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life
  • Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years

    Joy Harjo, Sandra Cisneros

    Hardback, 2022

    A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s fifty years as a poet.
  • Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years

    Joy Harjo, Sandra Cisneros

    E Book, 2022

    A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s fifty years as a poet.
  • For a Girl Becoming

    Joy Harjo, Adriana M. Garcia

    Hardback, 2025

    From United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and Pura Belpré Award–winning illustrator Adriana Garcia: a luminous benediction for a girl’s journey through life, and a celebration of our connections...
  • For a Girl Becoming

    Joy Harjo, Adriana M. Garcia

    E Book

    From United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and Pura Belpré Award–winning illustrator Adriana Garcia: a luminous benediction for a girl’s journey through life, and a celebration of our connections...
  • Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age

    Joy Harjo

    Hardback, 2025

    An inspirational work of wisdom, warmth, and generosity from a three-term US poet laureate.
  • Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age

    Joy Harjo

    E Book

    An inspirational work of wisdom, warmth, and generosity from a three-term US poet laureate.
  • Crazy Brave: A Memoir

    Joy Harjo

    Hardback, 2012

    A spiritual coming-of-age memoir from a poet praised for her "breathtaking complex witness and world-remaking language" (Adrienne Rich).
  • Cloud Runner: Poems

    Joy Harjo

    Hardback, 2026

    Three-term U.S. Poet Laureate returns with a moving collection about grief, loss, and how art can transform suffering.
  • Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America

    Gloria Bird, Joy Harjo

    Paperback, 1999

    "A collection of important, eloquent, and often mesmerizing writings by American Indian Women. . . . A profoundly moving statement of resilience and renewal."—San Francisco Chronicle