They are able because they think they are able.

Author of novels, poetry, and children's books with Native American heritage                          

Selected Works:

Fiction:


Novels:

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
The Plague of Doves - Harper, 2008
Shadow Tag - Harper, 2010

Story collections:
The Red Convertible: Collected and New Stories 1978-2008 - 2009
American Horse

Children's literature:

Grandmother's Pigeon - 1996
The Birchbark House - 1999
The Range Eternal - 2002
The Game of Silence - 2005
The Porcupine Year - 2008
The Leap - 1990

Poetry:
Jacklight - 1984
Baptism of Desire - 1989
Original Fire: Selected and New Poems - 2003
[edit]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                          

Daughter of an Ojibwa mother and a German-American father. The eldest of seven children.
Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorrishad six children, three of them adopted. Dorris had adopted three children when he was single; Erdrich also adopted them and the couple had three more children together. In 1991, their son Reynold Abel was hit by a car and killed. In 1995, Dorris and Erdrich unsuccessfully pursued a court case against their son Jeffrey Sava, who had accused them both of child abuse.

 Shortly afterward, Dorris and Erdrich separated and began divorce proceedings. Erdrich claimed that Dorris had been depressed since the second year of their marriage.
In 1997, Michael Dorris committed suicide.                          

Awards:

O. Henry Award, for the short story "Fleur" - published in Esquire, August 1986 and 1987
Pushcart Prize in Poetry
Western Literacy Association Award
Guggenheim Fellowship
National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, for Love Medicine - 1984 
World Fantasy Award, for The Antelope Wife - 1999
Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas - 2000
Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota, 2005
Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, for the children's book "The Game of Silence" - 2006
In April 2007 the University of North Dakota awarded Erdrich an honorary doctorate, but she refused it because of her opposition to that university's North Dakota Fighting Sioux mascot
In June 2009, received an honorary Doctorate - Doctor of Letters from Dartmouth College upon giving the 2009 Graduation Commencement Address.                          

Louise Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota. Tribal membership requires at least 25/100 Certified Degree of Indian Blood quantum documented by agency geneaology according to Bureau of Indian Affairs policy statement.

Owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota.