Poetic Portraiture

In honor of Native and Indigenous Heritage Month, join us to hear selected works by poets Kalehua Kim and Annie Wenstrup. The event will kick off with four local poets reading their works.

Kalehua Kim is a poet living in the Pacific Northwest. Born of Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese descent, her multicultural background informs much of her work. She is a 2023 winner of the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets and earned her MFA through the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, Calyx, and ‘Ōiwi, A Native Hawaiian Journal. Mele is her first collection of poetry.

Annie Wenstrup is a Dena’ina poet and the author of The Museum of Unnatural Histories. She is the recipient of a 2025 Whiting Award in Poetry. Her poems have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, New England Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. In 2023, she received The Alaska Literary Award and support from The Rasmuson Foundation. She was a Smithsonian Arctic Studies Fellow, and an Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow in 2022 and 2023.

Sponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, English Department, History Department, and the Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.