Poetry reading: Tina Deschenie and Michael Thompson

Poetry reading on Saturday October 11, 2:00 pm, kind of a small array, 505 Spruce St. (new location), Magdalena, New Mexico.

Please welcome Michael and Tina for their third event in Magdalena (reading, 2022; Michael’s play, Les Salauds, Magdalena Stage 2023).

Tina Deschenie is Diné and Tewa (Hopi), multi-media artist, poet, lifelong student, retired education administrator and grandmother. Her clans are: Ta’neeszahnii, born for Tó’aheedlíini. Her cheii are of the Tewa from First Mesa, AZ, and her nálí are Bit’ahnii. She grew up in Crystal, NM, her family home, and also in the Becenti community near Crownpoint, NM, (where her paternal family live). Deschenie is married to Michael Thompson, and both are retired educators. She holds a BA from Fort Lewis College, MA from UNM and an EdD from NMSU. She has exhibited her junk journals at the Cortez Cultural Center and at the Create Art and Tea gallery in Durango, CO.

Michael Thompson (Mvskoke Creek) was born in Holdenville, OK, and raised on a south Georgia cattle ranch near the Flint River among pine trees, oaks, creeks, and swamp. He taught for forty-two years at various levels of education in Georgia, Kansas, California, and New Mexico. In 2024 his essay Fences won first place for nonfiction in the Santa Fe Literary Magazine Pasatiempo. Today, he and Tina are restoring her family homesite and raising cattle on the Navajo Nation in Crystal, NM. They have four children and several grandchildren. Their family supports numerous Native American activities, traditions, and causes.

Their work has appeared in numerous publications and several anthologies, including Fertile: Earth Poems & Prose, Fourth Corner Press, 2023; Satchel: Story Objects, Art Juice Studio Press, 2022; The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, University of Arizona Press, 2021; Wet: Water Poems & Prose, Sharehouse Press, Co-editor, 2021.