Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie, born in 1966, Native American writer and filmmaker. Alexie combines traditional storytelling techniques with images drawn from contemporary popular culture to chronicle modern Native American life. His writings explore the complex issues facing Native Americans, such as the accelerating destruction of traditional cultures and the deep-rooted problems associated with life on the reservation.

Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr., was born in Spokane, Washington, to parents who hailed from the Coeur d’Alene and Spokane Indian tribes. He grew up on the Spokane reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. Alexie suffered from seizures as a child, and he developed into a loner and an avid reader. He attended reservation schools but later transferred to a mostly white public high school. Alexie attended college at Gonzaga University in Spokane and fell in love with poetry. He also studied writing at nearby Washington State University.

Shortly after leaving college Alexie began to win recognition for his writing. He published a number of poetry and prose collections over several years, including The Business of Fancydancing (1991), stories and poems; I Would Steal Horses (1992) and First Indian on the Moon (1993), both poetry books; and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of linked short stories about reservation life that received a citation for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction.

Alexie published his first novel, Reservation Blues, in 1995. The work tells the story of a Native American rock band that is given a magic guitar by the ghost of blues legend Robert Johnson. Alexie also collaborated with Native American musician Jim Boyd to produce a soundtrack album featuring songs described in the book. His next novel, Indian Killer (1996), is a darker story about a Native American serial killer who scalps his victims. Alexie continued to write and publish poetry, including the collection The Man Who Loves Salmon (1998). A short-story collection, The Toughest Indian in the World, and the poetry book One Stick Song were both published in 2000.

Turning to motion pictures, Alexie found another outlet for his work. He first wrote and produced the film Smoke Signals (1998), based on characters and stories from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. The independently produced movie, which like much of Alexie’s work draws on incidents and people from his own life, won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival and was picked up for national distribution. Alexie next moved into directing with The Business of Fancydancing, another movie based on his writings. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002. Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), a partly autobiographical novel about a 14-year-old boy, won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.