Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich, born in 1954, American writer, whose work focuses on Native American characters. Her writing is distinguished by a lyrical prose and the recurring theme of magic. Born in Little Falls, Minnesota, and educated at Dartmouth College, Erdrich was the daughter of a German American father and a Chippewa mother. Her early schooling was in a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. She began writing as a child and majored in creative writing in college. Erdrich earned a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University in 1979, then went to Dartmouth as writer-in-residence.

After corresponding with Michael Dorris, her former anthropology professor, who was also of Native American descent, she began to collaborate with him on short fiction. They married in 1981. In 1982 they won the Nelson Algren fiction award for their short story “The World's Greatest Fisherman.” Erdrich expanded the story into her first novel, Love Medicine (1984), the first book of a tetralogy that focuses on Native American characters. The subsequent volumes are The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), and The Bingo Palace (1994). Her fifth novel, Tales of Burning Love (1996), also portrays Native Americans, focusing on five women who are connected by their love for the same man. The Antelope Wife (1998) portrays members of an extended Native American family, blending descriptions of the harsh realities of their everyday lives, including the divorce of the narrative's central couple, with more mystical elements of Native American beliefs, customs, and history. Erdrich spent a year with her husband researching fetal alcohol syndrome, from which his adopted son suffered, and collaborated with him on a book on the subject, The Broken Cord (1989). In addition, they coauthored the novel The Crown of Columbus (1991). Erdrich has also written several volumes of poetry, including Jacklight (1984) and Baptism of Desire (1991).