Natalie Diaz


Natalie Diaz is a Mojave American poet, language activist, former professional basketball player, and educator. She is enrolled in the Gila River Indian Community.

Early life

Natalie Diaz was born in Needles, California. She grew up in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the border of California, Arizona, and Nevada. She attended Old Dominion University where she played point guard on the women's basketball team, reaching the NCAA Final Four as a freshman and the bracket of sixteen her other three years. She earned a bachelor's degree. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia, she returned to Old Dominion University, and completed an MFA in poetry and fiction, in 2006.

Career

Her work appeared in Narrative, Poetry magazine, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner, Iowa Review, and Crab Orchard Review.
Diaz's debut book of poetry, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was a 2012 Lannan Literary Selection, a 2013 PEN/Open Book Award shortlist, and “portrays experiences rooted in Native American life with personal and mythic power.” One important focus of the book is a brother's addiction to crystal meth.
In 2012, she was interviewed about her poetry and language rehabilitation work on the PBS News Hour.
In 2018, she was named as the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University.
In 2019, she will be faculty at the CantoMundo Retreat.

Personal life

Diaz currently lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona where she used to work on language revitalization at Fort Mojave, her home reservation. She worked with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language. Currently, she teaches at Arizona State University. She is enrolled as member of the Gila Indian Community.

Poetry

In Anthology