Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection When My Brother Was an Aztec is the winner of an American Book Award, and her second collection Postcolonial Love Poem, is a finalist for the National Book Award. She is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Lannan Literary Fellow, and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow, among others. Diaz is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University.