Ray Young Bear reads from his definitive new poetry collection, Manifestation Wolverine at Prairie Lights Bookstore on November 13, 2015.

Hailed by the Bloomsbury Review as “the nation’s foremost contemporary Native American poet” and by Sherman Alexie as “the best poet in Indian Country,” Ray Young Bear draws on ancient Meskwaki tradition and modern popular culture to create poems that provoke, astound, and heal.

 

 

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop has sponsored and hosted Ray Young Bear for many events, lectures and readings at the University of Iowa over the years. Newspaper articles, newsletters and event listings include mentions of his appearances at the Workshop, like this from an archived 2001 newsletter:

Readers sponsored by the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and Prairie Light bookstore and the International Writer’s Program this semester include Ray Young Bear.

On April 10th 1989, Ray Young Bear gave a talk and reading for the event ‘Creative Expressions: Poetry and Prose’ at 7:30 p.m., in the Jefferson Building on the University of Iowa campus.

Other participants in the event included Alurista, the Chicano poet and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship; Melba Joyce Boyd, the Afro-American poet and Fulbright Scholar; James Galvin, member of the Writers’ Workshop faculty; Ron Milner, Detroit playwright and winner of several awards including the Rockefeller Creative Artist Award; Peter Nazareth, the GoanlEast African author ‘and Chairman of the International Writers’ Program; Lorenzo Thomas. major Award-winning Afro-American Poet; and Rowena Torrevillas, the award-winning Filipino short story writer and member of the International Writers’ Program staff.

Ray Young Bear’s plaque on the Iowa Avenue Literary walk reads:

It is true,
It is true then,
I am a lonely
human being.

The lines are from his collection The Invisible Musician: Poems.