Heid E. Erdrich

Heid E. Erdrich has authored several poetry collections, including Little Big Bully, a National Poetry Series winner. Erdrich edited New Poets of Native Nations anthology from Graywolf Press and has received many honors, including the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress and a National Artists Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. She regularly serves as a visiting writer and most recently taught a term at Dartmouth College as a scholar of Native American Literature. Heid is Ojibwe, enrolled at Turtle Mountain. 

A firm believer in service to the literary community, Heid regularly serves as a visiting writer and panelist for awards and grants. She is the 2023 chairperson of the National Book Awards Poetry Panel. Heid reviews books and provides blurbs and encourages such service to those she mentors. 

Heid has a particular interest in the intersection of poetry, performance, and visual art. Her poems have been commissioned for the National Gallery of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art and elsewhere. She has collaborated on poem films, with choreographers and on public art projects.  Since 2005, Heid has curated dozens of art exhibits focused on Native American artists. She currently serves as the 2020-2024 guest curator for the Mead Art Museum of Amherst College. In 2023 her exhibition Boundless- a project combining texts and images from Amherst College’s collections of Native art and literature - opened at the Mead Museum. A second iteration of Boundless is on view at the Mead until July 2024.