Bitsui was born in 1974. He is originally from Whitecone, Arizona. He is Navajo; his mother was Todichʼíiʼnii (Bitter Water Clan), while his father was Tłʼízíłání (Many Goats Clan).[1][2]
He holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program. He is the recipient of the 2000-01 Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the 1999 Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, a Soul Mountain Residency, a Lannan Foundation Literary Residency Fellowship and a 2006 Whiting Award.[3] In 2012, he was honored with an NACF Artist Fellowship in Literature.[4][5] He has served in visiting faculty positions, including distinguished visiting, Eminent Writer for the University of Wyoming,[6] Visiting Hugo Writer University of Montana,[7] and San Diego State University,[8] where he has been on creative writing faculty since 2013.[9] Since 2013, he has served on the faculty of the Institute of American Indian Arts in the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program.[10]
Sherwin has published poems in American Poet, The Iowa Review, Frank (Paris), Lit Magazine, and elsewhere.
His poems were also anthologized in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century[11] and Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas.[12]
A common theme within Bitsui's poems is the exploration of different values, concepts and ideas become when experienced in Navajo as opposed to English.[13]
His book, Flood Song, was published in 2009 and won an American Book Award in 2010. His most recent book of poetry, Dissolve, was published in 2018.
