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4th
ANNUAL NORTHERN ARIZONA BOOK FESTIVAL |
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Ofelia
Zepeda
Tucson, Arizona
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| Ofelia
Zepeda is a poet, linguist, and educator.
She is a member of the Tohono O’odham tribe.
Her family, originally from Sonora, Mexico, lives in the small
farming community of Stanfield near Casa Grande, Arizona.
She is one of a handful of writers that chooses to write both in
English and her first language, the Tohono O’odham language.
She has two books of poems, Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert
(1995) and Jewed ‘I-hoi/Earth Movement, and her poems appear in
numerous anthologies.
She is a professor at the University of Arizona in the
linguistics department and American Indian Studies Program, she is
co-director of the American Indian Language Development Institute, and
she is series editor of the internationally acclaimed Native American
literary series, Sun Tracks.
Among other honors, in 1999 Ofelia was awarded one of the
prestigious MacArthur Fellowships.
She writes from the perspective of a contemporary tribal person
about her life experience and the desert space that the O’odham occupy
as their traditional homeland.
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