Sherman Alexie

Biography

Sherman Alexie (born 1966) grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington — the novel's setting is autobiographical geography. Born hydrocephalic, he survived brain surgery at six months and grew up as an outsider on his own reservation: too bookish, too fragile, too different. He attended a white high school off the reservation, where he was the only Indian student but found the education that reservation schools couldn't provide. He studied at Washington State University, where a poetry workshop redirected his life from pre-med to writing. By 1992, he had published his first poetry collection and short story collection (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven), drawing heavily on reservation experience. Reservation Blues was his first novel, published when he was 29. He went on to write the screenplay for Smoke Signals (1998), the first major film written, directed, and acted entirely by Native Americans. In 2018, during the #MeToo movement, multiple women accused Alexie of sexual harassment, and he issued a statement acknowledging harmful behavior, which complicated his literary legacy.

Sherman Alexie at a glance