Distinguished Visiting Writers Series: Tommy Orange and Debra Magpie Earling

Join Tommy Orange, author of NY Times bestseller, There, There and Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red and the long-awaited The Lost Journals of Sacajewea as the two read from their work, discuss Native fictions and consider what stories need to be heard and told. Moderated by April Ignacio of the Rez Book Club. A partnership between the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and Changing Hands Bookstore. Don’t miss this urgent and necessary “Writers in Conversation.”

While encouraged, RSVPs are purely for the purposes of monitoring attendance, gauging interest and communicating information about parking, directions and other aspects of the event. You do not have to register or RSVP to attend this event. This event is open to the public and free.

About the Authors

Debra Magpie Earling is the author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea. An earlier version of the latter, written in verse, was produced as an artist book during the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. She has received both a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She retired from the University of Montana where she was named professor emeritus in 2021. She is Bitterroot Salish.

Tommy Orange is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel There There, a multi- generational, relentlessly paced story about a side of America few of us have ever seen: the lives of urban Native Americans. There There was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year and won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Pen/Hemingway Award. There There was also longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Orange graduated from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California.