About

Tami Haaland is the author of three poetry collections, What Does Not Return, When We Wake in the Night, and Breath in Every Room, winner of the Nicholas Roerich First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, including, Ascent, Consequence, The American Journal of Poetry, The Ecopoetry Anthology, and Healing the Divide.  Her work has also been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, American Life in Poetry, and The Slowdown.

A graduate of the University of Montana MA in Literature program and Bennington College MFA in Creative Writing and Literature program, Haaland served as Montana's Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015 and has received a Governor’s Humanities Award, an Artist Innovation Award from Montana Arts Council, and was awarded writing residencies from Absoraka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation and Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.

Haaland has offered readings and workshops in England and Germany as well as many locations around the U.S.  She was invited to read at the National Book Festival in 2003, the first year that poetry became a part of this celebration. She was one of many artists who collaborated with UK filmmaker Anna Cady on her Elemental Dialogue series which was shown at festivals and other venues in Scotland and England, including the Tremenheere Sculpture Garden in Cornwall.

For five years, she taught poetry and literature at Montana Women’s Prison. During that time she collaborated with psychology and social work colleagues to develop a narrative therapy course and with artist Dennis Kern to assist MWP students in developing their own literary magazine. Haaland is a professor of English at Montana State University Billings and currently serves as Interim Dean of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.