Tami Haaland is the author of four poetry collections: If I Had Said Beauty, What Does Not Return, When We Wake in the Night, and Breath in Every Room, which was the winner of the Nicholas Roerich First Book Award. In addition, Bear Scratch Press at the University of Montana published a quire, or sequence of six poems, roughly based on the Demeter myth, titled Bright Flower. Haaland’s poems have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies.
A graduate of the University of Montana MA in Literature program and the Bennington College MFA in Creative Writing and Literature program, Haaland served as Montana's Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She received a Governor’s Humanities Award, an Artist Innovation Award from the Montana Arts Council, and was awarded writing residencies from Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation and Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.
She taught poetry and literature at Montana Women’s Prison for five years, where she collaborated with psychologists and social workers to develop a narrative therapy course, as well as with artist Dennis Kern to assist students in developing their own literary magazine. Haaland has worked at Montana State University Billings for many years, primarily as a professor of Creative Writing and for several years as the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
