Louise Erdrich  (b. 1954) The Red Convertible LINKS Louise Erdrich http://students.vcsu.nodak.edu/~toni_nelson/ This useful brief reference page, created by a student at Valley City State University in North Dakota, includes biographical and bibliographical information. Louise Erdrich: a bibliography http://www.epas.utoronto.ca:8080/~tfulk/ab_poets/lerdrich.html This site offers a short biography and an extensive bibliography of works by or about Erdich. BIOGRAPHY Louise Erdrich (b. 1954)  Born in Little Falls, Minnesota, Erdrich grew up in Wahepton, North Dakota, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Her grandfather was for many years tribal chair of the reservation where her parents taught in the Bureau of Indian Affairs School. She attended Dartmouth College, earning a degree in anthropology (1976) as well as prizes for fiction and poetry, including the American Academy of Poets Prize. She returned to North Dakota for a brief period of teaching before going on to study creative writing at Johns Hopkins University (M.A., 1979). The following year, she returned to Dartmouth as a writer-in-residence. Her works have appeared in the New England Review and Redbook as well as such anthologies of Native American writing as Earth Power Coming and That's What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women. She has published two collections of poems, Jacklight (1984) and Baptism of Desire (1989). Her novel Love Medicine (1984) won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994), and Tales of Burning Love (1996) extend the histories of families dealt with in Love Medicine. In 1991, Erdrich and her then husband, Michael Dorris, a professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth, published The Crown of Columbus, a collaborative novel about Christopher Columbus's discovery of America. They have pledged to donate a part of their royalties to American Indian charities.