Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

Sasha taqʷšəblu (taqwšəblu) LaPointe is an Indigenous author from the Pacific Northwest of the United States. She is Coast Salish and of mixed ancestry: Upper Skagit, Nooksack and white. She is most known for her 2022 memoir Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk, and book of poetry, Rose Quartz.

Personal life and education LaPointe has a double MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry. She graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018. LaPointe is an enrolled member in the Nooksack Tribe. Her great grandmother Vi taqʷšəblu Hilbert was a revered elder of the Upper Skagit Tribe, who has served as an inspiration for her writing. and the Washington State Book Award for Creative Nonfiction/Memoir. It was listed one of BookPage's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year. The memoir details her experience as a person of Coast Salish heritage, following her childhood and life as a young punk rocker, as well her family legacy. An article for NPR explored her motivation for becoming an author, writing "LaPointe is tired of the ways white people have decided language for native experiences". The book was partially funded by Artist Trust GAP Grant, which she received in 2018.

Her debut book of poetry Rose Quartz This poetry collection centers on themes of trauma, healing, and the Indigenous heritage of the Pacific Northwest. A review in Autostraddle reads, "The beginning of the collection drops us into Lapointe’s reality: an Indigenous woman living in the Pacific Northwest, proclaiming and explaining the world in which her relatives are so inherently linked to the mud and clay around her; 'the red paint / is for healing."

Her 2024 book of essays Thunder Song was featured as one of Nylon's March 2024 Must Read New Releases. Electric Lit also listed the book as one of the 42 Queer Books You Need to Read in 2024. Kirkus Reviews described the work as exploring "the importance of sustaining ancestral relations, the difficulty of balancing the imperatives of opposed cultural worlds, the toxic biases of the mainstream media, and the injustices and lethal prejudices of the severely flawed American health care system".