Qwo-Li Driskill

Poet, scholar, and activist Qwo-Li Driskill grew up in rural Colorado. Driskill earned a BA from the University of Northern Colorado, an MA from Antioch University Seattle, and a PhD from Michigan State University.

Driskill’s poetry engages themes of inheritance and healing, and is rooted in personal (unenrolled) Cherokee Two-Spirit, queer, and mixed-race experience. Walking with Ghosts (2005), Driskill’s first poetry collection, was named Book of the Month by Sable: The LitMag for New Writing and was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

S/he is coeditor of Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (2011) and Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions is Theory, Politics, and Literature (2011). Hir book Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory (2016) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2017. Driskill also coedited, with Colin Kennedy Donovan, Scars Tell Stories: A Queer and Trans (Dis)ability Zine (2007), and has work featured in several anthologies, including Beyond Masculinity: Essays by Queer Men on Gender and Politics (2008), edited by Trevor Hoppe, and Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry (2003), edited by Janice Gould and Dean Rader. S/he is the founder of Dragonfly Rising Press.

Driskill has taught at Antioch University Seattle and Texas A&M University. S/he is the Director of Graduate Studies and the Queer Studies Curriculum Organizer in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University.