Poet, educator, and linguist Margaret Noodin was raised in Chaska, an outer suburb of Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Her background is American, Anishinaabe, Irish, and Métis. She earned her bachelor’s degrees in English and education, an MFA in creative writing, and a PhD in linguistics at the University of Minnesota.
Noodin is the author of two bilingual Anishinaabemowin and English collections of poetry from Wayne State University Press, Weweni and What the Chickadee Knows (Gijigijigaaneshiinh Gikendaan). She also wrote the monograph Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature, which frames an Anishinaabe approach to reading by bringing together literary criticism of four celebrated Anishinaabemowin-speaking writers with native studies and sociolinguistics. Noodin’s poems have appeared in journals including Poetry, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and Yellow Medicine Review.
Noodin is a professor of English and American Indian studies at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is also Associate Dean for Humanities in the College of Letters and Science and an affiliate scholar at the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education and the Center for Water Policy. She co-founded and serves as content manager for the website ojibwe.net.