Laura Tohe


Laura Tohe is a Native American author and poet. She is poet laureate of the Navajo Nation for 2015–2019,
and is a professor emerita of English at Arizona State University.
Tohe was born in Fort Defiance, Arizona, the daughter of a Navajo code talker.
She grew up speaking both Diné bizaad/Navajo language and English and was punished in school for speaking her native language due to assimilation. She earned a B.A. from the University of New Mexico in 1975, an M.A. from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1985, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1993. She has been affiliated with Arizona State University since 1994.

Selected works

Books