Esther Belin

Endowed Chairs College of Arts and Letters

• Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair
• Established through a gift from the estate of Audrey and John Leslie

• Department of English

Bio

Esther Belin is the Leslie Endowed Chair in North American Indian and Indigenous Literary Studies at Michigan State University.  

A citizen of the Navajo Nation, she is the inaugural poet laureate of Durango, Colorado (2024–2026) as well as a 2025 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She calls the region just east of Dibé Ntsaa, the northern boundary mountain of Dinétah, her home. She has two collections of poetry: From the Belly of My Beauty and Of Cartography, and is a co-editor of The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, which received the American Book Award.