Jay B Muskett (Dine ́) is an Indigenous writer from Nakaibito, NM. He earned an M.F.A. in dramatic writing from the University of New Mexico and is an artEquity and MacDowell Fellow. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Santa Fe Community College in Santa Fe, NM.
Muskett’s full productions include, 1n2ian produced by the University of New Mexico and Sheepherders Special produced by New Native Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dance was selected to be a part of the annual reading at Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles and Life Within the Cracks was invited to be a part of The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Abilene, TX. He was also a finalist in the 2021 National Playwright’s Conference.
At MacDowell in 2020, he worked on three plays, two of which are ceremonial performances that were staged at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. The focus of these performances is centered upon Native American Identity following the direction of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and community engagement appealing to the plight of the Indigenous migrants seeking refuge from their war-torn homelands in Central America.
During his 2022 Fellowship, he wrote and completed eight chapters of his first novel, which covers the lives of people growing up and living on a reservation in New Mexico. He also completed the plot for a story pointing toward a dystopian future and asking the question, “what would happen to reservations and its people if civil unrest changed the landscape of American society?”
