“At I.A.I.A., I felt we were building an aesthetic,” Ms. Mailhot said. ‘We’re not interested in rewriting what’s already out there.”

After graduating and selling their books, Ms. Mailhot and Mr. Orange both decided to teach at I.A.I.A. The task feels even more vital following the allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct against the novelist Sherman Alexie, who was deeply involved with the program and often championed the work of younger writers. (After Mr. Alexie was accused of harassment by multiple women, both Mr. Orange and Ms. Mailhot asked their publishers to remove his endorsements from their books.)

The accusations against Mr. Alexie, who is perhaps the most prominent contemporary Native American writer, were painful for his former students and other young indigenous writers who looked up to him. But the scandal and its aftermath also had an unexpected positive side effect: Other native writers were ready to step in and become mentors and teachers.

“I want to help build momentum and get more native voices out there,” Mr. Orange said. “It’s a really powerful thing to be part of a native writing community.”

Growing up in Oakland, Mr. Orange, who is boyish looking with close cropped hair and a round, freckled face, often felt out of place. At his mostly white high school, he was called racial slurs — not for being native, but because kids mistook him for Chinese. Other times, people assumed he was Mexican.

His parents, who met at a commune in New Mexico, fought a lot after his mother converted to evangelical Christianity, and eventually divorced. (Years later, his mother returned to the Native American Church).

Mr. Orange often didn’t feel Native American enough, or white enough, he said. He threw himself into roller hockey, and fell in love with music after getting a guitar for his 18th birthday. He studied sound art in college, and hoped to one day compose piano scores for movies, but job prospects in the field were slim. After graduating in 2004, he found work at a used bookstore, and became a voracious reader, devouring books by Borges and Kafka and John Kennedy Toole.