Kinsale Drake

Kinsale Drake (, born March 4, 2000) is an American poet, playwright, performer, and writer. Drake is Diné and a citizen of the Navajo Nation. In September 2023, Drake was one of five winners of the 2023 National Poetry Series for her debut poetry collection The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket.

Early life and education
Drake was born in Los Angeles, California. She grew up between Los Angeles and Naatsisʼáán (Navajo Mountain), where her mother and maternal family are from.

Drake attended Yale College, where she studied English and ethnicity, race, and migration and graduated with a BA degree from each of the two departments. Their work "stud[ied] the intersections of cultural (re)vitalization movements, Indigenous poetics, and Indigenous feminisms."

Drake has served as a guest faculty member at the Emerging Diné Writers Institute, held at Navajo Technical University.

Writing
Drake's poetry often engages with her Navajo upbringing, family, and culture. She has called poetry "a way to explore her Navajo culture and her connection to her Indigenous roots," and has said her "grandmother has the biggest impact" on her work as a poet.

Drake has received several awards for her writing. In 2017, she was selected as a National Student Poet representing the West as part of the National Student Poetry Program run by the Library of Congress. While attending Yale, they received the Yale Young Native Storytellers Award for Spoken Word and Storytelling, the Academy of American Poets College Prize, and the J. Edgar Meeker Award. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Best New Poets, Poets.org, Poetry Northwest, The Slowdown, Black Warrior Review, The Adroit Journal, Poetry Online, NPR, and MTV. In 2019, Time named her one of "34 People Changing How We See Our World", and in 2021 Yahoo! named them an In the Know Changemaker. She has been featured in Nylon, Time, and Indian Country Today.

Drake is also a playwright, and was awarded Yale's Young Native Playwrights Award for her play titled As It Has Always Been.

Performance
Drake narrated the audiobook versions of Darcie Little Badger's Elatsoe (2020) and A Snake Falls to Earth (2021). She has also worked as a narrator for two Rick Riordan Presents releases: Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (2020) and The Cursed Carnival & other Calamities (2021).

In June 2023, Drake performed poetry at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Indigenous community
Drake is the founder of NDN Girls Book Club, a literary organization that "aims to amplify Indigenous authors, support tribal libraries and bookstores, and encourage reading and writing among Native youth."

Personal life
A member of the Drake family of Navajo Mountain, Drake would often visit her grandmother's farm there on the Utah-Arizona border. Her family comes from a traditional Navajo cultural background. Her maternal grandfather was Harold Drake Sr., a boarding school survivor who was taken from his family by police during a cultural dance and brought to Tuba City Boarding School. Drake is related to the late Buck Navajo Sr., the last hataałii (medicine man) of Navajo Mountain.

Drake uses she/they pronouns.

Influences
Drake has named Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko as influential figures at the start of her career.

Awards and recognition

 * 2017 National Student Poet
 * 2022 Young Native Playwrights Award
 * 2022 Joy Harjo Poetry Award
 * 2022 Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po) Inaugural Fellowship
 * 2023 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship Finalist
 * 2023 Aspen Institute Emerging Writer Fellowship for Poetry