Ernestine Saankalaxt’ Hayes is a Tlingit writer and professor from Alaska. She lived with her grandmother in the Native neighborhood of Juneau as a child while her mom was sick with tuberculosis, and moved to California when she was fifteen. Hayes didn’t make it back home until she was forty. She is a member of the Kaagwaantaan of the Tlingit Nation and in 2016 was awarded the Alaska State Writer Laureate. She has published several books including Blonde Indian, The Tao of Raven, and Juneau. She currently teaches creative writing, composition, and Alaska literature at the University of Alaska Southwest, and continues to write.