Mary Leauna Christensen, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, received her PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry can be found in Southern Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, and Poetry Daily, among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in the Common and in Black Warrior Review. She was named a 2022 Indigenous Nations Poets fellow for the inaugural In-Na-Po retreat and was selected as a returning fellow for 2023 and 2025. Mary Leauna’s debut poetry collection Beading Water (Wesleyan University Press) will be available in 2027. With No’u Revilla and Annie Wenstrup, Mary is also co-editing a forthcoming anthology of contemporary Indigenous poetry and poetics (Wesleyan University Press).