Poetry Center Book Award Reading: Orlando White and Patrick James Dunagan

Orlando White

Orlando White is originally from Tólikan, Arizona. He is Diné (Navajo) of the Naaneesht’ézhi Tábaahí (Zuni Water’s Edge Clan) and born for the Naakai Diné’e (Mexican Clan). He is also the author of the poetry collections Bone Light (Red Hen Press, 2009). His poems have appeared in Bombay Gin, Ploughshares, They Are Flying Planes, The Kenyon Review, Salt Hill Journal and Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. He is a recipient of a Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Residency and Bread Loaf John Ciardi Fellowship. He teaches at Diné College and the Institute of American Indian Arts; he previously taught at The Art Center Design College and Brown University. White holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University.

Patrick James Dunagan

Patrick James Dunagan works at Gleeson Library at University of San Francisco. He is a graduate of the poetics program from the New College of California, where he studied under Tom Clark, Adam Cornford, Gloria Frym, Joanne Kyger, George Mattingly and David Meltzer. With poets Marina Lazzara and Nicholas Whittington, he’s at work editing an anthology of critical writings by New College alumni and faculty. His books include: GUSTONBOOK (Post Apollo, 2011), Das Gedichtete (Ugly Duckling, 2013), Book of Kings (Bird and Beckett Books, 2015), Drops of Rain / Drops of Wine (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016) and THE DUNCAN ERA: One Reader’s Cosmology (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016). He edited and wrote the introduction for Owen Hill’s A Walk Among the Bogus (Lavender Ink, 2014).

Photo: Orlando White. Photo by Layli Long Soldier