Sherman Alexie
In 2007, Sherman Alexie received the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, a recognition tied to his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian — one of several honors that marked a career spanning poetry, fiction, screenwriting, and film direction.
Born on October 7, 1966, in Wellpinit, Washington, Alexie grew up in the United States and later studied at Washington State University. Writing in English, he has worked across multiple forms throughout his career. His short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and his novel Reservation Blues established him as a novelist and fiction writer of note, and he has also produced work for children. Beyond prose, Alexie has worked as a screenwriter and film director, extending his creative output well beyond the page.
The awards he has collected over the years reflect the range of that output. In addition to the National Book Award, he has received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, American Book Awards, the O. Henry Award, the Dos Passos Prize, and the Peter Pan Prize. That accumulation of recognition across fiction, short stories, and young adult literature points to the breadth of his work as a writer, novelist, poet, and artist working in the English language.
Quotes by Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie's insights on:
Can a writer forget something that he’s written in one of his own books? Yes, of course.
Each of us – rich and poor, gay and straight, black and white – we are fragile and finite. We all go through this glorious life without guarantees, without promises of rescue or redemption. We have freedom of speech and religion, and the absolute freedom to leave behind our loved ones, or to force them to unhappily pursue us.
If human beings possessed endless possibilities, then cities contained exponential hopes.
Seattle is Sweden! Extremely liberal, progressive, and very white, with a strong undercurrent of racism.
I thought maybe if you wore different clothes at school,′ Paul said, ‘maybe you could start a trend. You’d be original.’ ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘It’s high school, Dad. People get beat up for being original.
And ready to seizure at any moment. But still useful, and maybe even a little bit beautiful and sacred and magical.
He was the loser Indian father of a loser Indian son living in a world built for winners.
