Sherwin Bitsui Reading "Dissolve"

This inaugural session of the Whole Cloth Reading Series, hosted by Elee Kraljii Gardiner, welcomes US poet Sherwin Bitsui. Join us in the comfort of the Piano Lounge to hear Dissolve read from start to finish by the author.

Hot beverages and light snacks, comfortable seating, and a committed audience.

Sherwin Bitsui (Diné) is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is Diné of the Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl’izilani (Many Goats Clan). He is the author of Shapeshift (University of Arizona Press, 2003), Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), and Dissolve (Copper Canyon Press, 2018). His honors include a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship. He is also the recipient of a 2010 PEN Open Book Award, an American Book Award, and a Whiting Writers Award. In addition to teaching at the Institute of American Indian Arts, he is a member of the faculty at Northern Arizona University.

Drawing upon Navajo history and enduring tradition, Sherwin Bitsui leads us on a treacherous, otherworldly passage through the American Southwest. Fluidly shape-shifting and captured by language that functions like a moving camera, Dissolve is urban and rural, past and present in the haze of the reservation. A chance to listen to one of this century’s most haunting, raw and uncompromising voices.