Toni Jensen is the author of Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Choice (Ballantine, 2020). She is also the author of the short story collection From the Hilltop. Her essays have appeared in Orion, Catapult, Ecotone, and elsewhere. A recipient of a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.
Jensen teaches at the University of Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts, where her approach to teaching is deeply rooted in a lifelong love of reading and storytelling. Coming from a family of English teachers and avid readers, she sees the classroom as a place where “the good arguments” happen—about craft, character, and the choices that shape both fiction and nonfiction. Her mentorship focuses on helping students create and revise substantial bodies of work, while fostering a learning environment that values diverse voices, particularly Indigenous writers, and challenges the default to whiteness that often pervades higher education.
You can read her full teaching statement by clicking this link
Book Reviews
This book review describes Toni Jensen’s memoir Carry, a collection of essays exploring how childhood trauma, racism, gendered violence, and systemic injustice reverberate across American life. Drawing on her Métis heritage, Jensen examines violence against Indigenous women, mass shootings, and environmental exploitation while weaving personal narrative with cultural critique. Through fragmented, time-shifting essays, she invites readers to reflect on language, memory, and the deep social roots of violence in the United States.