Beth Piatote is a Nez Perce scholar, playwright, poet, and associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include The Beadworkers, which was longlisted for the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection and the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the scholarly monograph Domestic Subjects. Her play, Antíkoni, had its world premiere with Native Voices in Los Angeles in November 2024. Her poems, scholarly essays, and short stories have appeared in multiple journals and anthologies, including American Quarterly, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, World Literature Today, and PMLA. An enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Piatote is devoted to the study of her heritage language of Nez Perce and is an Indigenous language revitalization activist. She lives in Berkeley, California.
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Books by Beth Piatote
As a scholar of Native American literature and law, Beth Piatote focuses on the endangerment of Indigenous languages. As an activist, she moves against the current of English-language colonization, working to rescue and revitalize the language of her people. Language, she posits, is an expression of land, a means through which we can travel great distances.