Alexie got the news Wednesday night at the awards ceremony in New York. He won for best book in the young people's literature category. In his acceptance speech, Alexie, an author of 19 books of fiction, poetry and essays, quipped: "Wow ... I obviously should have been writing YA (young adult) all along."
He credited Alex Kuo, a creative-writing teacher at Washington State University who gave him an anthology of Native American writing. It helped persuade him to become a writer: "I had never read words written by a Native American. The first one was a poem about frying baloney ... I grew up eating fried baloney. The other was a poem by Adrian Lewis, and the poem had the line, 'Oh, Uncle Adrian, I'm in the reservation of my mind.' I knew right then when I read that line that I wanted to be a writer. It's been a gorgeous and magnificent and lonely 20 years since then."
4 comments:
Writerfella here --
writerfella always has had one question to ask, especially of someone such as the USS Sherman Alexie: "In order to write a book, is it necessary to have read one?"
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I'm guessing Alexie reads as much per annum as you do. From what I've seen, his writing is certainly as good as yours.
Writerfella here --
Sherman Alexie refuses to read the writing of any other Native who is over the age of 30. This was learned when Alexie and his Caucasian woman writing cohort solicited stories for a recent anthology of new fiction by Native writers (NOT fiction by new Native writers). Want to see the letters? writerfella gladly will provide them for your perusal...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I believe you, but he could've had a reason for his "refusal." Perhaps the publisher wanted new writers as well as new fiction, even if Alexie didn't say this explicitly.
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