Louise Erdrich
| Louise Erdrich | |
|---|---|
Erdrich at the 2015 National Book Festival.
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| Born | Karen Louise Erdrich June 7, 1954 Little Falls, Minnesota, US |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, poet |
| Genre | Native American literature, children's books |
| Literary movement | Postmodernism, Native American Renaissance |
| Notable works | |
| Spouse | Michael Dorris |
| Children | 4 |
Louise Erdrich (born Karen Louise Erdrich, June 7, 1954) is an American author, writer of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a band of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe and Chippewa).
Erdrich is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance. In 2009, her novel The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and also received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. In November 2012, she received the National Book Award for Fiction for her novel The Round House. She was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction at the National Book Festival in September, 2015. She was married to author Michael Dorris and the two collaborated on a number of works.
She is also the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis that focuses on Native American literature and the Native community in the Twin Cities.
Erdrich was born on June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota. She was the oldest of seven children to her father, Ralph Erdrich, a German-American, and her mother, Rita (née Gourneau), a Chippewa Indian (of half Ojibwe and half French blood). Both parents taught at a boarding school in Wahpeton, North Dakota, set up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and her maternal grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, served as tribal chairman for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians for many years. While Erdrich was a child, her father paid her a nickel for every story she wrote. Her sister Heidi is a poet who also lives in Minnesota and publishes under the name Heid E. Erdrich. Another sister, Lise Erdrich, has written children's books and collections of fiction and essays.
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