For almost a decade, the Academy of American Poets has selected editors, 12 award-winning poets, to represent their expertise and perspectives through the Poem-a-Day poetry series. The selected poems are presented with Guest Editor bios, writing excerpts, and an interview about their approach to curating the month’s poetry selections which reach over 800,000 people through websites, newsletters, and social media. Atsitty de Gonzales will be guest editor for the month of November.

“This has been a wonderful opportunity for me as a poet to showcase an array of poets and their work, not only to the world but to my students and the greater Beloit College community,” she says.

Mary Sutton, editorial director at the Academy, described Tacey’s curation as a “tapestry.” The selected poems and her manner of unfolding them to readers are revealed in an interview with Sutton that illustrates Tacey’s openness to develop and weave new connections between her experiences, literary history and genres, and her current writing projects. Her process as an author and as a mentor deepen her engagement with students about writing craft and the larger world. Atsitty de Gonzales foreshadowed future conversations with Beloit students’ about the power of language in a previous interview by The Millennial Review for Native American Heritage Month. She discussed themes of the environment, coming of age, love, and responsibility, especially when the monsters we may face are of our own making.

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). She attended Brigham Young University (BYU) and earned a BA in English with a minor in Native American Studies. She continued her education at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she earned a BFA in creative writing. She went on to Cornell University for an MFA in poetry with an American Indian Studies minor, and then to Florida State University, where she received a doctorate in creative writing. She joined the faculty at Beloit College in 2024 and is currently teaching Introductory to Literary Studies and Introduction to Creative Writing.