Kimberly Blaeser is an Anishinaabe poet, photographer, and scholar of Native American literature. Raised on the White Earth Reservation, she is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2016, and founded Indigenous Nations Poets, an organization supporting Indigenous poets. In collections including “Copper Yearning” and “Ancient Light,” Blaeser examines the continuing effects of colonization, Indigenous relationships with land and community, environmental crisis, and the connections between human and more-than-human life. She also combines poetry and photography in works she calls picto-poems. “Ancient Light” was selected for the National Book Foundation’s 2026 Science + Literature program.
