A Native American author of children’s books, poetry and novels about native American characters and settings, Louise Erdrich celebrates her birth date as June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minn.
A Native American author of children’s books, poetry and novels about native American characters and settings, Louise Erdrich celebrates her birth date as June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minn.
Erdrich is the oldest of seven children, and her parents both taught at a boarding school in Wahpeton, N.D., set up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her mother was Chippewa Indian and her dad was German-American. As a child, her father paid her a nickel for every story she wrote.
She was raised Catholic, and attended Dartmouth College from 1972-76, earning her B.A. in English. She was part of the first class of women admitted to the college. In 1978, she enrolled at John Hopkins University in Baltimore and earned her Master of Arts in 1979. In 1981, she married Michael Dorris, and they had three children together.
Her first novel, “Love Medicine,” published in 1984, coincided with her first collection of poems, “Jacklight” (1984). Her next poetry collection, “Baptism of Desire,” was published in 1989. Erdrich is still known best as a novelist. “A Plague of Doves,” her 2008 novel, is considered her most famous work.
Her new novel, “The Night Watchman,” is set in 1953 and came about through her grandfather, who chaired the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and fought a Congressional initiative to move native people off their lands. In 2021 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this work.
Erdrich has published 17 novels and more than 30 books in all, including children’s literature, poetry and non-fiction winning the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction twice.
Erdrich is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, a federally recognized Ojibwe people.
We have one of her fiction books, “Love Medicine.”
