Juniper Summer Writing Institute Readings with Jake Skeets and Deb Olin Unferth

Jake Skeets (he/him) is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Whiting Award. His poetry and prose have appeared widely in journals and magazines such as Poetry, The New York Times, and The Paris Review.  He holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Arts Projects, a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, and the 2023-2024 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi.  He is from the Navajo Nation and teaches at the University of Oklahoma.

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including the novels Barn 8 and Vacation, the story collections Wait Till You See Me Dance and Minor Robberies, the memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, and the graphic novel I, Parrot, in collaboration with the illustrator Elizabeth Haidle. Her fiction and essays have appeared in over fifty magazines and journals, including Harper’s, the New York Times, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, and has received a Guggenheim fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Capital Fellowship for Innovative Literature, and fellowships from the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ucross residencies.

She’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches in the MFA programs for the Michener Center for Writers and the New Writers’ Project. She also directs the Pen City Writers, a prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Read more about her work at debolinunferth.com.

The Juniper Reading Series readings are open to the public, though public seating is limited. We suggest a sliding-scale donation of $5 to $20 from members of the public attending the reading series. You can donate to our scholarship fund online through this secure link.