Time: 8:00pm
Location: The Loft Literary Center, at Open Book (Performance Hall), 1011 Washington Ave
EQ: R. Vincent Moniz Jr. and Natalie Diaz
R. Vincent Moniz, Jr. has been a part of the Twin Cities artistic community for over two decades as an actor and only recently has begun to share his poetry. He has performed at The Loft Literary Center’s highly acclaimed Equilibrium series, Revolver Magazine's Revolver at the Ritz, The Chazen Museum of Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the outdoor amphitheater of the Minneapolis American Indian Center. Vincent's themes contain multitudes. From growing up in the Phillips neighborhood to speaking against Native American Stereotypes, Moniz finds agency, humor, and poetry in the adventure of being an Urban Indian. The work of this Southside firestarter has been published in the Yellow Medicine Review, onl
...ine as part of Native Literatures: Generations, and The Center for Victims of Torture as part of their 30th anniversary It Starts With Hope series. His work can be seen on the walls of the MIA as a part of their new exhibit “Arriving at Fresh Water: Contemporary Native Artists from Our Great Lakes” and on the Cedar avenue people bridge in the center of the Little Earth of United Tribes housing projects. Moniz was selected as a 2012 Jerome Fellow, a 2013 Beyond the Pure Fellow, 2014 Verve Fellow, 2015 Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion Fellow and most recently Vince was selected to be a recipient of the Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant. At the E. Donald Two-Rivers Memorial Poetry Slam, Vincent was crowned and is now the current and reigning Individual World Poetry Slam, Indigenous Poetry Slam Champion. View his performances online at redoubted.com.
Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She was a member of the 1997 NCAA Old Dominion University Final Four women’s basketball team that lost to Tennessee in the championship game. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press. Her second book will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2016. She is a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. In 2014, she was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, a Hodder Fellowship, and a PEN/Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, as well as being awarded a US Artists Ford Fellowship. Diaz teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts Low Rez MFA program and lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, where she directs the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program, working with the last remaining speakers at Fort Mojave to teach and revitalize the Mojave language.
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