Thank you all for being here.
Annie Wenstrup's ancestors are German, English, and Dena'ina.
She comes from a long line of Dena'ina storytellers.
She listens with care to the recordings of her grandfather,
which were transcribed and published to sukdu and sukdu'a,
stories held in common and stories more personal.
She listens to her mother and her aunts, who tell parts
of the stories never recorded.
She knows her children, Abby and Joseph,
need every part of their stories.
Annie's poems draw on traditions,
on strengths and sorrows, that are thousands of years old,
still vibrant and growing.
She's also a citizen of this moment.
So her poems make room for Star Trek, for eating disorders,
for being considered other, for being observed but not seen.
During a museum sovereignty fellowship with the Smithsonian,
Annie he began thinking about the museum
as a cultural construct.
Then she considered the museum as a literary conceit
and created a book that is a museum.
Who decides what a museum holds?
How are collections amassed?
What is stolen?
Who gets to curate?
When putting together exhibits or encounters,
who are the intended viewers?
What do we teach them to see?
What happens when only men get to speak?
What happens when a museum appropriates, misrepresents,
or erases events or people?
With humor and outrage and great intelligence,
Annie curates a collection that holds whole worlds.
The Museum of Unnatural Histories, her first book,
digs into experiences of Indigenous people, both women
and men, as they reclaim the right to tell
their stories as they see fit.
Annie's work has earned an Alaska Literary Award, a Story
Knife Residency, a Whiting Award.
She's been a fellow of the Indigenous Nations Poets
organization.
She serves as senior editor for Poetry Northwest Native
Torchlight Series, and right now she's
editing a North American Indigenous Poetry anthology
forthcoming from Wesleyan.
Please welcome Annie Wenstrup.