NDN Transmissions is a public reading and conversation between Diné writer Lou Cornum and Anishinaabe poet, Nicole Wallace. Building on their friendship and their work on the legacy of Anishinaabe and Chimehuevi poet Diane Burns, Wallace and Cornum will read from their work, and discuss Indigenous poetry, archives and queer NDN futures.

Nicole Wallace is Executive Director at the Poetry Project, and author of Waasamowin. Nicole Wallace’s first chapbook, WAASAMOWIN, was published by IMP in 2019. Most recently, Nicole was the June/July 2020 poetry micro-resident at Running Dog and a 2019 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow. Recent work can be read in print in Survivance: Indigenous Poesis Vol. IV Zine and online at Running Dog, A Perfect Vacuum, and LitHub. They have also contributed to programs and publications celebrating the work and life of the late poet, Diane Burns, author of Riding the One-Eyed Ford (Contact II, 1981). 

Through their ongoing participation in language classes and through their work as a writer and poet, Nicole is dedicated to reconnecting with and carrying forward the Ojibwe language (Ojibwemowin / Anishinaabemowin). They have participated in remote language classes with Dr. Wendy Makoons Geniusz through UW-Eau Claire, and most recently with Memegwesi Sutherland through the Minneapolis American Indian Center/Culture Language And Arts Network. 

Nicole received a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study (2008) and a Masters of Library Science in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Materials from Queens College, CUNY (2012). They have lived and made work as a guest on occupied Canarsee and Lenape territory (NYC) since 2005 and are currently the Managing Director of The Poetry Project. Nicole is of mixed settler/European ancestry and is a patrilineal descendent of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe).

Lou Cornum is Assistant Professor of Native American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. They hold a Ph.D. in English from the City University of New York Graduate Center, an M.A. from the University of British Columbia, and a B.A. from Columbia University.

Their research interests broadly encompass Critical Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Cultural Studies with particular attention to Native American literature and politics. They are currently working on a book project tentatively titled Lunar Landings: Critical Indigenous Studies and the Colonization of Space. Work from their dissertation on Indigenous Futurism was published as the article “Seizing the Alterity of Futures: Toward a Philosophy of History across Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism” in the History of the Present Journal in 2023. In 2020, they co-edited a special issue of Canadian Literature titled “Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.” An additional ongoing project is a study of what they term “the irradiated international”, the diffuse collective of peoples affected by atomic testing, atomic bombs, and uranium mining. “Radioactive Intimacies: The Making of Worldwide Wastelands in Marie Clements’s Burning Vision” was published in the Critical Ethnic Studies Journal in 2020. They are a founding editorial collective member of Pinko Magazine.

Prior to joining NYU, Cornum was the Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in Native American Studies at Wesleyan University.

Lou Cornum is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. 

Co-Sponsors: Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice, Syracuse University; Department of English, Syracuse University