Karen Louise Erdrich (born June 7, 1954) is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings.
She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
Erdrich is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance.
She has written 28 books in all, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children's books.
Erdrich was born on June 7, 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota.
She was the oldest of seven children born to Ralph Erdrich, a German-American, and Rita (née Gourneau), a Chippewa woman (of half Ojibwe and half French blood).
Both parents taught at a boarding school in Wahpeton, North Dakota, set up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Erdrich's maternal grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, served as tribal chairman for the federally recognized tribe of Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians for many years.
Though not raised in a reservation, she often visited relatives there.
She was raised "with all the accepted truths" of Catholicism.
While Erdrich was a child, her father paid her a nickel for every story she wrote.
Her sister Heidi became a poet and also lives in Minnesota; she publishes under the name Heid E. Erdrich.
Another sister, Lise Erdrich, has written children's books and collections of fiction and essays.
1972
Erdrich attended Dartmouth College from 1972 to 1976.
She was a part of the first class of women admitted to the college and earned a B.A. in English.
During her first year, Erdrich met Michael Dorris, an anthropologist, writer, and then-director of the new Native American Studies program.
While attending Dorris' class, she began to look into her own ancestry, which inspired her to draw from it for her literary work, such as poems, short stories, and novels.
During that time, she worked as a lifeguard, waitress, researcher for films, and as an editor for the Boston Indian Council newspaper The Circle.
1978
In 1978, Erdrich enrolled in a Master of Arts program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
1979
She earned the Master of Arts in the Writing Seminars in 1979.
Erdrich later published some of the poems and stories she wrote while in the M.A. program.
She returned to Dartmouth as a writer-in-residence.
After graduating from Dartmouth, Erdrich remained in contact with Michael Dorris.
He attended one of her poetry readings, became impressed with her work, and developed an interest in working with her.
Although Erdrich and Dorris were on two different sides of the world, Erdrich in Boston and Dorris in New Zealand for field research, the two began to collaborate on short stories.
The pair's literary partnership led them to a romantic relationship.
1981
They married in 1981, and raised three children whom Dorris had adopted as a single parent (Reynold Abel, Madeline, and Sava ) and three biological children together (Persia, Pallas, and Aza Marion ).
1991
Reynold Abel suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and in 1991, at age 23, he was killed when he was hit by a car.
1995
The couple separated in 1995.
She is also the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis that focuses on Native American literature and the Native community in the Twin Cities.
In 1995, their son Sava accused Dorris of committing child abuse; in 1997, after Dorris' death, his adopted daughter Madeline claimed that Dorris had sexually abused her and Erdrich had neglected to stop the abuse.
Dorris and Erdrich separated in 1995, and Dorris died by suicide in 1997.
In his will, he omitted Erdrich and his adopted children Sava and Madeline.
2001
In 2001, at age 47, Erdrich gave birth to a daughter, Azure, fathered by a Native American man Erdrich declines to identify publicly.
2009
In 2009, her novel The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
2012
In November 2012, she received the National Book Award for Fiction for her novel The Round House.
2013
She is a 2013 recipient of the Alex Awards.
2015
She was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction at the National Book Festival in September 2015.
In 2021, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Night Watchman.
She was married to author Michael Dorris and the two collaborated on a number of works.
