The School of Creative Writing is honoured to host poet and artist Layli Long Soldier for a reading from her new collection We, and a conversation with poet and associate professor Billy-Ray Belcourt.
About We: In this ingenious and insightful arrangement of poems, lyric essays, and her own visual artworks presented in full color, Long Soldier creates unique spaces of collaboration, mentorship, and shared knowledge. The 184 X’s signed to a broken treaty, the fringes of a winged dress braided in honor of children lost to Indian boarding schools, and intricate Lakota star quilts become shapes and patterns that convey collective kinship, memory, and grievance. “From this day forward,” Long Soldier writes, “I declare a war of language.”
We is a visionary new collection by a writer and artist whose unfolding works are among the most groundbreaking of our time. (Graywolf)
Layli Long Soldier is a poet, artist, and citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. She is author of the collection We (Graywolf Press, 2026) and Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Date: November 23, 2026 (Monday)
Format: online
More events from the Visiting Writers Series
Faculty & Alumni Showcase: Creative Research Across Genres and Modes | September 23 | Recent MFA grad Emily Chou celebrates the publication of her debut graphic novel On Your Way at our Faculty and Alumni showcase.
Publishing Industry Event: Paige Sisley and Janice Zawerbny In Conversation | October 21 | Get an insider’s look at fiction publishing and the bi-annual HarperCollins PublishersLtd/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction.
To Turn The Page In More Than Two Directions: Making & Remaking Dog Days, With Emily LaBarge | October 26 | Take a glimpse into the process of the literary experiment Emily LaBarge undertook in writing her acclaimed hybrid memoir Dog Days.
