Louise Erdrich (Born Karen Louise Erdrich on June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota) is a Native American author and poet.
She is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, a federally recognizes Ojibwe people.
Erdrich is the oldest of seven children. Her father is German American, and her mother is an Ojibwe woman of French descent.
Her parents both taught at a boarding school in North Dakota established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Erdrich’s parents didn’t live in a reservation, but she often visited relatives who lived at Turtle Mountain.
Erdrich’s father used to pay her a nickel for every story she wrote. Her sister Heidi is a poet who also lives in Minnesota. Their sister Lisa writes children’s books, collections of fiction, and essays.
Erdrich attended Dartmouth College. She was part of the first class of women admitted to the Ivy league college, and she earned a B.A. in English. She met Michael Dorris, and anthropologist and the director of the new Native American Studies Program. Erdrich credits his classes with inspiring her to look into her own heritage and make it a focus of her writing. She worked as a waitress, lifeguard, researcher for films, and as the editor for The Circle, the Boston Indian Council newspaper while attending Dartmouth.
In 1979, she earned the Master of Arts in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. After publishing some of the poems and stories she wrote in her M.A. program, Erdrich returned to Dartmouth as a writer-in-residence.
She and Dorris remained in contact and began collaborating on several ideas for short stories even though he was halfway across the world in New Zealand. Their writing relationship evolved into a romance. Dorris adopted three children before their marriage in 1981. He and Erdrich raised them together with their three biological children. They divorced in 1996.
Erdrich has written twenty-eight books including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short stories, children books, and a memoir. Her work centers on Native American characters, and is influenced by the literary methods and narrative style pioneered by William Faulkner.
She is considered one of the most significant writers of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance. Her work has garnered several awards including an Anisfield-Wolf Book award, a National Book Award for Fiction, Alex Awards, the Library of Congress Prize for American Literature, and a Pulitzer Prize.
She owns Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis that specializes in Native American literature and the Native Community in the Twin Cities.
Books by Louise Erdrich:
Love Medicine
The Plague of Doves (a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize)
The Night Watchman (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winner 2021)
Future Home of The Living God: A Novel
The Round House: A Novel
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse; A Novel
The Round House: A Novel
The Birchbark House
The Mighty Red
The Sentence
The Game of Silence
The Porcupine Year
Antelope Women
Makoons
Chickadee
Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country
The Painted Drum
The Beet Queen
The Blue Jay’s Dance
Four Souls
La Rose
Original Fire
Grandmother’s Pigeon
The Range Eternal
The Master Butcher’s Singing Club
The Bingo Palace
Tracks
Shadow Tag
Tales of Burning Love
The Red Convertible
Baptism of Desire: Poems
Photo Credit: Louise Erdrich - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louise_erdrich_8199.jpg; Author Louise Erdrich reading at the 2015 National Book Festival. Erdrich won the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction for her novel The Round House, 5 September 2015, Own work, Author: SLOWKING4. Accessed 29 May 2025
