ASU professor wins Pulitzer Prize

No one understands the power of language quite like Natalie Diaz, who recently learned she had won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her book “Postcolonial Love Poem” while at home on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation.

“It was a shock,” she said in a phone interview from Joshua Tree National Park in California, where she’s conducting research. “I didn’t know the Pulitzers were coming up, or that they were going to be announced. I heard the news while I was back home on the reservation. So for the first time in the majority of my adult career, including as an athlete, I was able to go to my mother’s house first thing to tell her the news versus having to call her at great distance.”

Diaz had a somewhat unconventional path to poetry, starting her post-college career as a professional basketball player before making writing her full-time job. Another former athlete, Tim Seibles, a professor at Old Dominion University, was influential in her decision.