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We
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
An extraordinary work of poetry, essay, and artwork by Layli Long Soldier, author of the award-winning WHEREAS
In We, Layli Long Soldier examines what it means to be in community, to be in relation with family, nation, history, and language. We is the first-person plural, the pronoun of inclusion in English. It is also Wé, the Lakota word meaning “blood”―what is shared and what is shed.
In this ingenious and insightful arrangement of poems, lyric essays, and her own visual artworks presented in full color, Long Soldier creates unique spaces of collaboration, mentorship, and shared knowledge. The 184 X’s signed to a broken treaty, the fringes of a winged dress braided in honor of children lost to Indian boarding schools, and intricate Lakota star quilts become shapes and patterns that convey collective kinship, memory, and grievance. “From this day forward,” Long Soldier writes, “I declare a war of language.”
We is a visionary new collection by a writer and artist whose unfolding works are among the most groundbreaking of our time.
An extraordinary work of poetry, essay, and artwork by Layli Long Soldier, author of the award-winning WHEREAS
In We, Layli Long Soldier examines what it means to be in community, to be in relation with family, nation, history, and language. We is the first-person plural, the pronoun of inclusion in English. It is also Wé, the Lakota word meaning “blood”―what is shared and what is shed.
In this ingenious and insightful arrangement of poems, lyric essays, and her own visual artworks presented in full color, Long Soldier creates unique spaces of collaboration, mentorship, and shared knowledge. The 184 X’s signed to a broken treaty, the fringes of a winged dress braided in honor of children lost to Indian boarding schools, and intricate Lakota star quilts become shapes and patterns that convey collective kinship, memory, and grievance. “From this day forward,” Long Soldier writes, “I declare a war of language.”
We is a visionary new collection by a writer and artist whose unfolding works are among the most groundbreaking of our time.
- GenresPoetryIndigenousEssays
208 pages, Paperback
Published October 6, 2026
About the author
Layli Long Soldier
16 books207 followersLayli Long Soldier is the author of WHERREAS, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 27, 2026
Yet again, Layli Long Soldier has written an experimental book of poems that inspire, devastate, and fully mesmerize me. I'm not sure if I have read any work that exists in so many mediums at once, both knowledgeable and holding space for certain "unknowables." Her first poetry collection changed my brain forever, and I think this one did, too.
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
October 9, 2026
Layli Long Soldier creates a masterful work in which poetry, essays and images exist in conversation, documenting a history in which that kind of reciprocity was repeatedly denied.
Long Soldier grounds her work in the indigenous term “kapemni,” described as two 3D cones swirling and meeting at their points in a mirroring. But the story of the U.S. indigenous populations in the Americas is, instead, an example of the breakdown of that reciprocity and mutuality, without which true agreement cannot happen. As We quotes Joseph M. Marshall III in The Lakota Way, “Truth consists of two parts: that which is given and that which is accepted.” There cannot be a shared truth without another to hear and accept that truth. There cannot be a true understanding among peoples when the more powerful can determine and impose its version on the other, changing it unilaterally as it wishes.
Long Soldier asks us to look closely at the indigenous people in the U.S., how they became the target of European colonization, how they survived as involuntary participants of ever-changing treaties and borders, how through this all they remained connected to the land. We see the visceral impact of a history of oppression that lives on in the present day in the minds and bodies of those indigenous peoples. Histories seldom taught in schools. Histories that continue to impact the descendants to this day. And we are asked now by Long Soldier to play the receiver of the truth of that history. Finally.
Long Soldier grounds her work in the indigenous term “kapemni,” described as two 3D cones swirling and meeting at their points in a mirroring. But the story of the U.S. indigenous populations in the Americas is, instead, an example of the breakdown of that reciprocity and mutuality, without which true agreement cannot happen. As We quotes Joseph M. Marshall III in The Lakota Way, “Truth consists of two parts: that which is given and that which is accepted.” There cannot be a shared truth without another to hear and accept that truth. There cannot be a true understanding among peoples when the more powerful can determine and impose its version on the other, changing it unilaterally as it wishes.
Long Soldier asks us to look closely at the indigenous people in the U.S., how they became the target of European colonization, how they survived as involuntary participants of ever-changing treaties and borders, how through this all they remained connected to the land. We see the visceral impact of a history of oppression that lives on in the present day in the minds and bodies of those indigenous peoples. Histories seldom taught in schools. Histories that continue to impact the descendants to this day. And we are asked now by Long Soldier to play the receiver of the truth of that history. Finally.
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October 20, 2026Layli Long Soldier's We is her follow up to her National Book Award nominated book, Whereas. We shares many similarities to her previous work in poetics (concrete poetry) and themes (language, treaties, legalese, among others). The crown jewel of the book is the section (K)nots and Footnotes where there are two parallel poems going on at once: the "main" text focuses on the history of tribal sovereignty while the footnotes focus on Dewey Beard's life and story, a survivor of the Wounded Knee Massacre. One of the main themes of the book is how the legalese of treaties has a profound effect on the everyday life of Native Americans; while this theme was present in Whereas, it's much stronger in this book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Soulful. Rooted. Earth and Sky.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews