Karen Louise Erdrich (born June 7, 1954) is a Native American author of novels, poetry, and children's books. She is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Ojibway and Chippewa). She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
Erdrich was born, the eldest of seven children, to Ralph and Rita Erdrich in Little Falls, Minnesota. Her father was German-American while her mother was French and Anishinabe. Her grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, served as a tribal chairman for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs school. She attended Dartmouth College in 1972-1976, gaining an AB degree and meeting her future husband, the Modoc anthropologist and writer Michael Dorris, then director of the college’s Native American Studies program. Subsequently, Erdrich worked in a wide variety of jobs, including as a lifeguard, waitress, poetry teacher at prisons, and construction flag signaler. She also became an editor for The Circle, a newspaper produced by and for the urban Native population in Boston. Erdrich graduated with her Master of Arts degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1979.
Erdrich's Works
* Love Medicine (1984)
* The Beet Queen (1986)
* Tracks (1988)
* The Crown of Columbus [with Michael Dorris] (1991)
* The Bingo Palace (1994)
* Tales of Burning Love (1997)
* The Antelope Wife (1998)
* The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
* The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003)
* Four Souls (2004)
* The Painted Drum (2005)
Children's literature
* Grandmother's Pigeon (1996)
* The Birchbark House (1999)
* The Range Eternal (2002)
* The Game of Silence (2005)
Poetry
* Jacklight (1984)
* Baptism of Desire (1989)
* Original Fire: Selected and New Poems (2003)
Non-fiction
* Route Two [with Michael Dorris] (1990)
* The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birthyear (1995)
* Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (2003)
As editor or contributor
* The Broken Cord by Michael Dorris (Foreword) (1989)
* The Best American Short Stories 1993 (Editor, with Katrina Kenison) (1993)
