Sherman Alexie

Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a Spokane novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington.

His best-known book is the semi-autobiographical young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), which won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature He is a citizen of the Spokane Tribe of the Spokane Reservation and grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Alexie's father, Sherman Sr., was a citizen of the Coeur D'Alene Tribe, and his mother, Lillian Agnes Cox, was of Spokane, Colville, Choctaw, and European American ancestry. One of his paternal great-grandfathers was of Russian descent.

Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, a condition that occurs when there is an abnormally large amount of cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system. He had to have brain surgery at the age of six months and was at high risk of death or mental disabilities if he survived. Because of his health problems, Alexie was excluded from many of the activities that are rites of passage for young Indian males.

Education In order to improve his education, Alexie decided to leave the reservation and attend high school, where he was the only Native American student, Unhappy with law, Alexie found comfort in literature classes. Dremousis said that "she'd had an affair with Alexie, but had remained friends with him until the stories about his sexual behavior surfaced". Dremousis' response initially appeared on her Facebook page and was subsequently reprinted in The Stranger on March 1, 2018. The allegations against Alexie were detailed in an NPR story five days later. In February 2018, it was reported that the American Library Association, which had just awarded Alexie its Carnegie Medal for You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir, was reconsidering, and in March it was confirmed that Alexie had declined the award and was postponing the publication of a paperback version of the memoir. The American Indian Library Association rescinded its 2008 Best Young Adult Book Award from Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, "to send an unequivocal message that Alexie's actions are unacceptable."

Career In 1992, Alexie published his first collection of poetry, The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems through Hanging Loose Press. With that success, Alexie stopped drinking and quit school just three credits short of a degree. However, in 1995, he was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree from Washington State University.

Literary works

Alexie's stories have been included in several short story anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore; and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Small Presses. Additionally, a number of his pieces have been published in various literary magazines and journals, as well as online publications.

Themes Alexie's poetry, short stories, and novels explore themes of despair, poverty, violence, and alcoholism in the lives of Native American people, both on and off the reservation. They are lightened by wit and humor. His career began with the publishing of his first two collections of poetry in 1992, entitled, I Would Steal Horses and The Business of Fancydancing. was well received, selling over 10,000 copies. "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" (2003), published in The New Yorker Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories (2012) "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star−Spangled Banner' at Woodstock"

Novels In his first novel, Reservation Blues (1995), Alexie revisits some of the characters from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, and Junior Polatkin, who have grown up together on the Spokane Indian reservation, were teenagers in the short story collection. In Reservation Blues, they are now adult men in their thirties. Some of them are now musicians and in a band together. Verlyn Klinkenborg of the Los Angeles Times wrote in a 1995 review of Reservation Blues: "you can feel Alexie's purposely divided attention, his alertness to a divided audience, Native American and Anglo." Claudia Rowe of The Seattle Times wrote in June 2017 that the memoir "pulls readers so deeply into the author's youth on the Spokane Indian Reservation that most will forget all about facile comparisons and simply surrender to Alexie's unmistakable patois of humor and profanity, history and pathos." Alexie cancelled his book tour in support of You Don't Have to Say You Love Me in July 2017 due to the emotional toll that promoting the book was taking. Two months later, Alexie decided to resume the tour, with some significant changes. As he related to Laurie Hertzel of The Star Tribune, "I'm not performing the book," he said. "I'm getting interviewed. That's a whole different thing." Alexie went on to add that he would not be answering any questions that he did not want to answer. "I'll put my armor back on," Alexie said.

Films In 1998, Alexie's film Smoke Signals gained considerable attention.

The Business of Fancydancing, written and directed by Alexie in 2002, explores themes of Indian identity, gay identity, cultural involvement vs blood quantum, living on the reservation or off it, and other issues related to what makes someone a "real Indian." The title refers to the protagonist's choice to leave the reservation and make his living performing for predominantly-white audiences. Evan Adams, who plays Thomas Builds the Fire in "Smoke Signals", again stars, now as an urban gay man with a white partner. The death of a peer brings the protagonist home to the reservation, where he reunites with his friends from his childhood and youth. The film is unique in that Alexie hired an almost completely female crew to produce the film. Many of the actors improvised their dialogue, based on real events in their lives. It received a 57 percent and "rotten" rating from the online film database Rotten Tomatoes.

Other film projects include: Sonicsgate (participant, 2009)