m.s. RedCherries, poet and citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, won the American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry for her debut poetry collection, mother (2024).

 

The book’s poems tell the story of a young Native American, adopted by white parents, as she comes to reconnect over time with her tribe, family, culture and ancestral land.

 

Tommy Orange said, “This is an incredibly powerful book of poetry that is also fiction, but it is so real, and singular, as to defy definition, and I defy anyone to read it and come away unchanged.”

 

Xochitl Gonzalez said, “RedCherries has rendered an intimate portrait of inheritance— from the spiritual to the genetic— that is, ultimately, a testimony of empowerment.”

 

Cosponsored by the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), and the Honors College.