Mark Turcotte
Photo courtesy of the poet
Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band Anishinaabe) was named the 6th Illinois Poet Laureate in spring 2025. 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.
Turcotte first arrived in Chicago in the spring of 1993 where he rediscovered his love of words and quickly established himself in the city’s thriving poetry scene. That summer he was winner of the first Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. Soon thereafter he was selected by Brooks as a Significant Illinois Poet.
Turcotte is author of Exploding Chippewas (TriQuarterly, 2002), Le Chant de la route (Vague Verte Editions, 2001), and The Feathered Heart (MSU Press, 1998). Turcotte has received awards from the Lannan Foundation, the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. He lives in Chicago where he is Distinguished-Writer-In-Residence in the English Department at DePaul University.