Faculty Presentation: Kim Blaeser, Major Jackson and Megan Biddle
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
5-7 PM
Stanley Kunitz Common Room
Join us for a summer faculty reading and artist talk with writers Kimberly Blaeser and Major Jackson, and artist Megan Biddle.
To join us virtually, visit our YouTube Channel and look for the “Upcoming live streams” section. The majority of our public events are available via YouTube live stream with the presenters’ permission.
About Our Speakers
Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is a multi-genre author. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Her debut short fiction collection, Red Ants, is forthcoming in fall 2026. Blaeser’s honors include the 2025 Poets & Writers’ Writer for Writers Award, Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee, and MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts.
Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023). His forthcoming cookbook, A Bowl of Goodness: Nourishing Poems with a Side of Soup, will be published in October 2026. His honors include fellowships from Civitella Ranieri, John S. Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. He is the inaugural recipient of the Patricia Cannon Willis Prize in American Poetry from Yale Library. Jackson has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and World Literature Today. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.
Megan Biddle is a sculptor whose practice spans printmaking and drawing. She has been invited to residencies including MacDowell, The Jentel Foundation, and Sculpture Space. In 2024, she was awarded the Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. Her work was acquired into the U.S. Embassy’s permanent collection in Riga, Latvia. Biddle has taught at institutions including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Pilchuck Glass School, UrbanGlass, and Oxbow School of Art. She currently lives and works in Philadelphia, where she is an adjunct associate professor in the Glass Program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
