Dr. Beth Piatote

Biography

Beth Piatote is an associate professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of the scholarly monograph 'Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, Law in Native American Literature' published by Yale in 2013, which received an honorable mention for the Modern Language Association 2014 Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, Languages. Piatote's mixed-genre collection, 'Beadworkers: Stories,' published in 2019 by Counterpoint, was long-listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and short-listed for the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, as well as the California Independent Booksellers Association “Golden Poppy” Prize for Fiction. Her full-length play 'Antikoni' has been supported through workshops and public readings by Native Voices Autry, New York Classical Theatre, and the Indigenous Writers Collaborative at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; another of her plays, 'Tricksters, Unite!' was featured in the 2022 Native Voices Short Play Festival. Currently, she holds a playwriting fellowship at AlterTheatre. Piatote's creative and scholarly work has appeared in several prestigious journals and anthologies and she has served as a judge for literary awards from PEN America and the Poetry Foundation. Her research focuses on the representation of Native American legal systems and the sensory representations within texts of the long twentieth century. Piatote is also an enrolled member of the Nez Perce and Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation.

Research Interests