Geri Mendoza Gutwein, Ph.D., is a professor emerita of English at HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College who taught English, Creative Writing and Native American Literature there for many years.

While at HACC, she was also the director of the Wildwood Writers’ Festival. A National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching Development Fellowship recipient, her work focused on the integration of Native American literature, music, and art.

She is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Every Orbit of the Circle, and The Story She Told. Her poetry has been published in Connecticut Review, The Fledgling Rag, and other literary journals. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry. An Utterance of Small Truths, a chapbook of poetry, is forthcoming in 2022.

Her Lakota and Mexican-American background figures prominently in her work.  She is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. She lives in Spearfish, South Dakota with her husband.