March’s Community Conversation featured four Native American writers; Halee Kirkwood, Anthony Ceballos, Diane Wilson and Art Coulson, who shared their stories and personal experiences. Each writer presented a unique perspective on representation and identity by reading aloud parts of their writing and speaking on their lives.
The conversation, held on March 21, acted as a follow-up to Professor Angelique EagleWoman’s presentation, “The United States and Tribal Relations,” that occurred on March 7.
Community Conversations, hosted by the Office of Inclusive Excellence, are a place for community members to come together, to gain and share knowledge about a deliberately chosen topic. The Office of Inclusive Excellence holds multiple conversations a semester that cover a wide range of topics.
Creative writing Professor Carolyn Holbrook, one of the co-hosts of the event, began with an introduction to each presenter and welcomed Halee Kirkwood to share their story. Kirkwood is a graduate of Hamline’s Creative Writing Masters of Fine Arts program and has published many essays and works of poetry.
Kirkwood read through a chapter titled “I Traveled the Earth” from their in-progress memoir about traveling around the country when they were younger through a program called Upward Bound. The program’s purpose is to provide resources and foster the skills necessary for young people to complete secondary education and to go on to succeed in postsecondary education.
Anthony Ceballos, another accomplished writer and Hamline alumni with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing, presented his section of the discussion after Kirkwood concluded their reading. Ceballos read three of his pieces and then introduced the next reader, Diane Wilson.
Wilson has published four award-winning books and essays that she says mostly fall under the theme of cultural recovery. She is currently writing a collection of essays that explore themes about relationships with land, specifically with the land that she lives on now. She read an excerpt from an essay she is working on about a trip to Costa Rica and how environmental changes occurring there can impact the land here.
Art Coulson was the next and final speaker of the event who read a couple of short chapters from his novel “Chasing Bigfoot.” He expressed that he has mainly written books for children but is currently working on two projects that are for adults.
After each speaker shared their stories, it was time for a Q&A where the panelists dug a little deeper into the material they shared and touched on some new topics including the struggle to find the right spaces to share their work in.
“When you’re in a room of Native people, discussing your work, there is a base knowledge of how to respect each other and our stories,” Kirkwood said during the event. “Models like that where it’s not necessarily meant to silo our stories or exclude each other, but when we have spaces to be with each other, that’s vital.”
To learn more about the Office of Inclusive Excellence and the events they host, visit hamline.edu/about/office-inclusive-excellence.