Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band Anishinaabe) was named Illinois Poet Laureate 2025-29. He spent his earliest years on North Dakota's Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation and in the migrant camps of the western United States. Later, he grew up in and around Lansing, Michigan. He was the winner of the First Gwendolyn Brooks Open-Mic Poetry Award. Turcotte is author of The Feathered Heart; Songs of Our Ancestors; a chapbook, Road Noise; a bilingual collection, Le Chant de la Route; and ExplodingChippewas. His work has appeared in many national and international literary journals and is included in the new and first-ever Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. Turcotte was the recipient of a 2001-2002 Lannan Foundation Literary Completion Grant. He lives in Chicago, where he is distinguished Writer-In-Residence at DePaul University.
