Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press. She is a recipient of a 2012 Lannan Literary Fellowship, a 2012 Native Arts Council Foundation Fellowship, the 2013 Narrative Prize, the 2014 Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University, a 2014 Bread Loaf Fellowship, and a 2014 USA Ford Fellowship. Diaz teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts Low Rez MFA. She lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, where she directs the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program, working with the last Mojave speakers to teach and revitalize the language.