범주:원근법
범주:발표12 최소 읽기
사진: 몰리 마일즈
Poet, editor, curator, and teacher has spent decades bringing poetry into public life and creating opportunities for other artists.
The McKnight Foundation announces the selection of poet, editor, and literary artist Heid E. Erdrich as its 2026 Distinguished Artist. Presented annually since 1998, the award honors a Minnesota artist or culture bearer who has made significant contributions to the state’s cultural life.
Erdrich is Ojibwe, enrolled at Turtle Mountain, and has spent more than three decades expanding what poetry can be and who it can reach. She calls herself a literary artist because her work extends far beyond the written page. She performs, collaborates with visual artists and dancers, co-creates films, curates exhibitions, edits anthologies, and brings poems into sidewalks, storefronts, parks, markets, and other public spaces. “Everybody has a poetic utterance in their life somehow,” she said. “Many people think poetry is inaccessible. For me, it has always been something anyone has the potential to create.”
Writer Sun Yung Shin, who nominated Erdrich for the award, has known her for more than 15 years as a member of the poetry community and an admirer of her work. “Heid E. Erdrich is a Minnesota artist of the highest caliber as well as a uniquely influential arts leader, organizer, educator, and public intellectual,” Shin wrote in the nomination. “Heid works in community spaces because she believes that language belongs to everyone, and I have seen her enjoy, value, and champion the language of all kinds of people.”
“She is a Distinguished Artist in the fullest sense. Moving across forms from poetry and film to visual art and public projects, she draws on her Ojibwe and Midwestern experiences while expanding what literary art can be and who it can reach.”– DEANNA CUMMINGS, 예술 및 문화 프로그램 디렉터
DeAnna Cummings, Arts & Culture program director at the McKnight Foundation, points to Erdrich’s impact both as an artist and as a champion for other creatives. “Heid has spent decades bringing poetry into public life while creating opportunities for other artists to create and collaborate. She is a Distinguished Artist in the fullest sense. Moving across forms from poetry and film to visual art and public projects, she draws on her Ojibwe and Midwestern experiences while expanding what literary art can be and who it can reach.”
For Tonya Allen, president of the McKnight Foundation, Erdrich’s influence extends far beyond her own artistic practice. “Heid is a visionary poet and cultural leader whose work has helped shape the literary landscape of Minnesota and Native Nations across the country. Through decades of creativity, collaboration, and leadership, she has enriched Minnesota’s cultural life and shown how art can connect people, strengthen communities, and open new possibilities.”
Choosing Minnesota
Born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, and raised in Wahpeton, North Dakota, Heid E. Erdrich studied English literature and creative writing at Dartmouth College and pursued graduate study in writing at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and the Union Institute.
After living on the East Coast, she chose the Twin Cities as an adult, drawn by the region’s publishers, support for the arts, poetry community, and vibrant urban Native community. Her early connections included The Circle newspaper, youth programs at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, and Native Arts Circle. She also became active in the broader literary community through the Loft Literary Center.
For Erdrich, Minnesota offered both an artistic home and a sense of community. The publishers, arts organizations, public spaces, and Native and literary communities that first drew her here became places where she could make work, build lasting relationships, and create opportunities for others.
Words from the Community:
“Heid stands out for how her importance to poetic art is celebrated nationally and for how, at the same time, she remains fully present, grounded, and essential here in Minnesota.”
— Michael Kleber-Diggs | Poet, essayist, and arts and community advocate
“She is a woman who pushes up her sleeves in dark times, shows up with a strong heart and good ideas, a willingness to use everything she knows and imagines to promote our survival.”
— Mona Susan Power | Author
“Heid is a steady north star in our communities, opening doors, building relationships, empowering everyone along the way to have a voice and reminding us with every step what is possible when art and creative expression is authentically rooted in community.”
— Joan Vorderbruggen | Arts and community advocate and collaborator
“There’s no separation between what she makes and how she moves in the world. Both are thoughtful, engaged, and grounded in lived relation.”
— Sam Aros-Mitchell, Ph.D. | Artist and cultural leader
“If you have attended a cool art or literary event recently, Heid Erdrich probably helped make it happen.”
— Kathryn Kysar | Professor, poet, and editor
“In the local Native American writing community, she is both an anchor and current. Heid is not only a keeper of space, a cultivator of voices, and a force that ensures our words find their place in the world.”
— Nick Metcalf | Writer and social work instructor
“Heid is a mentor to me and many other writers as she has remained humble, kind, and true to her own work. She continually encourages other writers, includes, and supports many BIPOC writers.”
— Louise Waakaai’gan | Anishinaabe poet
“She inspires and supports our entire community to rise from prose to poetry even when we do not see ourselves as capable of such artistry.”
— Marnita Schroedl | Founder of Marnita’s Table
“In addition to being an internationally lauded poet, Heid E. Erdrich is a staunch supporter of the arts and has continuously uplifted young Indigenous poets throughout the U.S.”
— Anaangokwe Wolf | Ojibwe poet and immigration activist
“I’m honored to know Heid as a friend and writing colleague for 30 years, someone whose success has allowed her to raise up her community, who always offers her generous heart and talents to support and encourage others to rise with her.”
— Diane Wilson | Writer and educator
“Her restless intellect continues to find new poetic paths through collaborations with other artists and art forms, helping weave connections within and among all of us peoples who have come to live, work, play, and make art together.”
— Davi Gray | Writer and community organizer
Poetry in public life
As the inaugural Poet Laureate of Minneapolis in 2024, Erdrich commissioned 20 poems inspired by places important to Native people, offered free readings and workshops, and closed her term with “Poem for Minneapolis/Bde Otá Othuŋwé/Gakaabikaang,” a crowd-sourced chorale woven from hundreds of residents’ voices. In 2026, she began a second crowd-sourced poem on justice and read its opening lines from the Minnesota State Capitol steps at a public demonstration.
Her Poetry Service Announcement project, or PoeS.A., promotes poetry as public art through collaborations with artists and community members. She contributed poetry to Big Animal Productions’ Kaleidoscope of Love and selected other poets’ work for the project, in which more than 1,000 neighbors formed a monarch butterfly as a work of visual protest.
That movement from page to public space is central to Erdrich’s work. Beyond her writing, she has created short films, curated exhibitions of Native American art, and collaborated across disciplines, extending her poetry through visual art, movement, and community-based projects.
Creating opportunities for other artists
Erdrich taught Creative Writing and Native American Studies for more than three decades, including at the Loft Literary Center and Augsburg University’s Master of Fine Arts program, as well as in visiting roles at colleges and universities across the country. She also has led workshops with Tribal colleges, Native writers, and the Minnesota Humanities Center, and has been a mentor and guest of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
Erdrich describes this work as a form of civic responsibility. “I live as a citizen of the arts,” she said. “I have always felt a civic responsibility to the arts community and try to be a good member of it. A lot of that work happens below the surface, creating opportunities, supporting other artists, and helping things succeed. I enjoy that work as much as I enjoy making my own.”
Her approach to mentorship is direct: help more artists connect with more audiences. “Sharing opportunities with other people helps secure an audience for all,” she said. “My work doesn’t exist without my audience.”
A body of work recognized nationally
Erdrich’s books include Verb Animate: Poems and Prompts from Collaborative Acts; Little Big Bully, which received a National Poetry Series award, the Balcones Poetry Prize, and the Library of Congress’s Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes; 과 BOUNDLESS: Native American Abundance in Art and Literature, among other collections. She edited New Poets of Native Nations, which received an American Book Award, and has contributed to other major anthologies of Native writing.
She has also served as a regional editor for Joy Harjo’s 세상의 빛이 정복되었을 때 우리의 노래가 전달되었습니다, guest-edited an issue of POETRY, and chaired the poetry panel for the 2023 National Book Awards.
Her honors include Minnesota Book Awards, Academy of American Poets Laureate Prize, a Bush Leadership Fellowship, a McKnight Artist Fellowship, a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Literature, First Peoples Fund grants, and Minnesota State Arts Board fellowships and grants. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and continues to write and create across forms.
ABOUT THE 2026 DISTINGUISHED ARTIST SELECTION COMMITTEE
Erdrich was selected by a panel of community members with broad perspectives and knowledge about the region’s diverse arts and cultural landscape. The panelists were Christina Wood, executive director of the Duluth Art Institute; Bethany Lacktorin, multidisciplinary artist; Theresa Sweetland, executive director of FORECAST Public Art; Seitu Jones, multidisciplinary artist and advocate; and María Isa, artist and CEO of independent record label SotaRico.
McKNIGHT DISTINGUISHED ARTIST AWARD에 대하여
그만큼 맥나이트 저명한 작가 상 예술가를 인정하다 그리고 문화 보유자 미네소타에 평생 동안 상당한 공헌을 하여 우리 지역 사회를 풍요롭게 한 사람들입니다. 매년 $100,000상은 지역적, 지역적 및/또는 국가적으로 중요한 예술 창작에 지속적으로 헌신한 예술가에게 수여됩니다. 이 예술가들은 미네소타를 자신의 삶과 경력의 중심으로 삼아 우리 주를 문화적으로 더욱 풍요로운 곳으로 만들기로 결정했습니다. First and foremost, they have produced creatively incisive art reflecting their particular and extraordinary point of view. McKnight Distinguished Artists have also inspired other artists, earned acclaim from audiences, patrons, critics, and other arts professionals, and some have founded and strengthened arts organizations. Since 1998, McKnight has recognized 29 artists with a Distinguished Artist Award.
Nominations are accepted on a rolling basis—meaning you can submit a nomination at any time throughout the year. Nominations received by May 1 will be considered for the current year’s award cycle. Those submitted after that date will automatically be reviewed for the following year. Nominate an artist or Culture Bearer.
McKNIGHT FOUNDATION 소개
그만큼 맥나이트 재단미네소타에 있는 가족 재단인 McKnight Foundation은 사람과 지구가 번창하는 더욱 정의롭고 창의적이며 풍요로운 미래를 발전시킵니다. 1953년에 설립된 McKnight Foundation은 중서부 지역의 기후 솔루션을 발전시키고, 공평하고 포용적인 미네소타를 건설하고, 미네소타의 예술과 문화, 신경 과학 및 글로벌 식량 시스템을 지원하는 데 깊이 헌신하고 있습니다.
