Louise Erdrich

State: Minnesota

Karen Louise Erdrich (born June 7, 1954) is an acclaimed Indigenous American author, poet, and children's book writer of Ojibwe and German-American heritage. Raised in Little Falls, Minnesota, and Wahpeton, North Dakota, she is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Erdrich graduated from Dartmouth College and earned an MFA from Johns Hopkins University. She burst onto the literary scene in 1984 with Love Medicine, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Over her prolific career, she has published over 28 books, spanning novels, poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature. Notable works include The Plague of Doves, The Round House (which earned the National Book Award in 2012), The Night Watchman (Pulitzer Prize winner in 2021), and the Birchbark House series for younger readers. She founded Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, a bookstore dedicated to Indigenous works, and continues to explore themes of Ojibwe culture, family continuity, history, and the interplay between realism and the spiritual.

Genres: Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Picture Book, Poetry

Audiences: Adult, Children's, Middle Grade, Young Adult