Abigail Chabitnoy is the author of How to Dress a Fish, winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted in the international category of the 2020 Griffin Prize for Poetry. She has a B.A. in anthropology and English, and an MFA in creative writing from Colorado State University. Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Boston Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, Literary Hub, and Red Ink, among others. She teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts low-residency MFA in creative writing and Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. She is a Koniag descendant and member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak, Alaska.
An Indigenous anthropologist-poet visits Woody Island in Alaska, formerly the site of the Kodiak Baptist Orphanage in the early 20th-century, where her great-grandfather lived before being sent to the Carlisle Indian School.
An Indigenous anthropologist-poet searches for ancestors while acknowledging the need to adapt.
An Indigenous anthropologist-poet speaks to the Russian colonization of Alaska from 1784–1867 and how stereotypes and histories shape the lives of Indigenous women.
The Sugpiaq people in south-central Alaska have faced Russian colonialism, American assimilation policies, and Native American boarding school violence. A descendant and anthropologist-poet claims a radical presence in looking to the past and the future.
