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Native American novelist, poet, and filmmaker Sherman Alexie will give a talk on “Without Reservations: An Urban Indian’s Comic, Poetic, and Highly Irreverent Look at the World” 8 p.m. tonight at Colton Chapel.
Free and open to the public, the lecture is part of the Presidential Speaker Series on Diversity.
Alexie will meet with English classes as this year’s Closs Visiting Writer-in-Residence, discussing the creative process and literature. That portion of his residency is sponsored by the English department through the Ruth Mary Callahan Closs Fund established by Fred Closs, a long-time member of the English faculty and originator of Lafayette’s Roethke Humanities Festival, along with Joan Closs in memory of his mother, Ruth Mary Callahan Closs, to encourage student writing.
The author also will meet with American Studies classes, including an introductory course and a seminar on Native American culture and issues. In addition, he will interact with several First-Year Seminars.
Alexie’s latest book, Ten Little Indians, a collection of 11 short stories, was selected in June as a Publishers Weekly editors’ pick and was named a USA Today summer books pick. One of the stories ran in The New Yorker in June. It has earned praise from the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and others.
Recipient of many awards, Alexie also is the author of First Indian on the Moon, Reservation Blues, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Indian Killer, and The Toughest Indian in the World. He wrote the screenplay for the film Smoke Signals (1998) and directed The Business of Fancydancing (2002), adapted from a collection of his poetry and short stories. He is working on the screenplay adaptation of Reservation Blues, which he will direct and co-produce for SearchParty Films.
“[Lone Ranger] is for the American Indian what Richard Wright’s Native Son was for the Black American,” stated the Chicago Tribune.
“With 10 books, a movie at Sundance, and a budding stand-up career, Sherman Alexie has managed to anger some of his own tribe, spark a few feuds and become a critical darling – all by offering unsparing depictions of Native American life,” noted The New York Times Magazine in a 1998 article.
Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian from Wellpinit, Wash., on the Spokane Indian reservation. Shortly after the publication of his first book, The Business of Fancydancing, he was described as “one of the major lyric voices of our time” by the New York Times Book Review, which selected the work as a 1992 Notable Book of the Year. He also received a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship that year. He won the World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout at the Taos Poetry Circus in 1998-2000, becoming the first to hold the title three consecutive years. He also won the regional 1999 New York Heavyweight Poetry Bout. Alexie’s several books of poetry include Old Shirts & New Skins, The Summer of Black Widows, and One Stick Song.
His first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, published in 1994, was a citation winner for the PEN/Hemmingway Award for Best First Fiction. In the same year he also earned a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award.
Alexie’s first novel, Reservation Blues, published in 1995, was selected as a Booklist Editors Choice Award for Fiction and was awarded an American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation in 1996. The novel Indian Killer, published in 1998, was a New York Times Notable Book and was selected as one of ten “Best of Pages” titles by People magazine. For his skilled fiction writing, Alexie was named one of Granta magazine’s “Twenty Best American novelists Under the Age of Forty.”
In June 1999, The New Yorker called Alexie one of the top writers for the 21st Century. He was featured in the magazine’s Summer Fiction Edition, “20 Writers for the 21st Century.”
Alexie’s screenplay, Smoke Signals, based on The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, became the first feature film produced, written, and directed by American Indians. It premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy. Smoke Signals also received a Christopher Award in 1999. Alexie was nominated for the Independent Feature Project/West 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.
He has signed on as a contributing editor for the web site Contentville.com and has written numerous magazine articles.
Alexie’s visit is sponsored by the departments of American Studies and English; the offices of the president, provost, and intercultural development; and the Williams Center for the Arts.