Join us at form & concept for a special reading of N. Scott Momaday’s award-winning poetry, read by the Native American author’s daughter Jill Momaday and granddaughter Natachee Momaday Gray. This reading is organized by New Mexico artist Thais Mather, whose solo show Western Blue was inspired by the poetry of Momaday.
Please contact the gallery to reserve a signed book by N. Scott Momaday.
Navarro Scott Mammedaty, a Kiowa Indian, was born in Lawton, Oklahoma on February 27, 1934, and grew up in close contact with the Navajo and San Carlos Apache communities. He received his BA in political science in 1958 from the University of New Mexico. At Stanford University he received his MA and PhD in English, in 1960 and 1963, respectively. Momaday's honors include the 2019 Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, awarded by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation to celebrate lifetime achievement in literature and to remind the world "that peace can be forged with words." He has also received the 2019 Ken Burns American Heritage Prize, the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, an Academy of American Poets Prize, an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Premio Letterario Internationale "Mondello," Italy's highest literary award. He is recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Momaday was a founding Trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, and sits on the Boards of First Nations Development Institute and the School of American Research.
Jill Momaday is a mother, actor, writer and filmmaker whose film, Return to Rainy Mountain, documents her Kiowa heritage and life in the arts as the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday. She is also the family advisor and archivist for the forthcoming PBS American Masters episode featuring her father. Momaday served as Chief of Protocol in New Mexico’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Her film credits include Tony Hillerman's Coyote Waits, produced by Robert Redford, and Silent Tongue, written and directed by Sam Shepard.
Natachee Momaday Gray is a Santa Fe poet and artist whose work focuses on the melding of art and myth, ancestry and nostalgia, food and prayer, glamour, frivolity, and time. In her uniquely creative voice, she draws on her Kiowa and Apache heritage to create compelling stories that transcend labels. In addition to poetry, Natachee is also a book-maker, fiction writer, blues singer and film maker.