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Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian from Wellpinit, WA, a town on the Spokane Indian reservation, who currently resides in Seattle, WA, with his wife and two sons.

Poetry Shortly after the publication of his first book, The Business of Fancydancing—a collection of poetry and stories—Alexie was described as “one of the major lyric voices of our time” in the New York Times Book Review, which selected the book as a “1992 Notable Book of the Year.” In that same year Alexie received a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Alexie’s several books of poetry include Old Shirts & New Skins (UCLA), The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press), and One Stick Song (Hanging Loose Press).

Alexie competed in and won the World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout at the Taos Poetry Circus in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001, becoming the first poet in the history of the Bout to hold the title for four years. In 1999 Alexie also won the regional New York Heavyweight Poetry Bout.

Fiction Alexie’s first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, published in 1994, was a citation winner for the PEN/Hemmingway Award for Best First Fiction. In the same year he earned a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award and a Washington State Governor’s Writers Award for his work.

Alexie’s first novel, Reservation Blues, published in 1995, was selected as a Booklist Editor’s Choice Award for Fiction and was awarded an American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation in 1996. His novel, Indian Killer, published in 1998, was a New York Times Notable Book and was selected as one of ten “Best of Pages” titles in 1996 by People magazine. For his fiction writing, Alexie was named one of Granta magazine's “Twenty Best American Novelists Under the Age of Forty.”

In June 1999 The New Yorker acknowledged Alexie as one of the top writers for the 21st Century. He was one of twenty writers featured in the magazine’s Summer Fiction Edition, "20 Writers for the 21st Century.”

Alexie’s second short story collection, The Toughest Indian in The World, published in 2000, earned him the 2001 PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction. His new short story collection, Ten Little Indians, was published in June 2003, and has received much critical praise.

Filmmaking Alexie’s first screenplay, Smoke Signals, based on his book The Lone Range and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy. In 1999 Smoke Signals received a Christopher Award, and Alexie was nominated for the Independent Feature Project/West 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.

Alexie made his directorial debut with The Business of Fancydancing, which premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. The film, which he wrote based on his first collection of poems and stories of the same title, is currently in theatrical release. It has won a number of awards, including the Los Angeles Outfest Outstanding Screenwriting Award; and the Victoria Film Festival, the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival audience awards.

Stand-up Alexie made his stand-up debut at the Foolproof Northwest Comedy Festival in Seattle, WA, in April 1999, and was the featured performer at the Vancouver International Comedy Festival’s opening night gala in July 1999.

Other Work Alexie was the guest editor for the Winter 2000/2001 edition of Ploughshares, a prestigious literary journal. He was a 1999 O. Henry Award Prize juror, was one of the judges for the 2000 inaugural PEN/Amazon.com Short Story Award, and a juror for both the Poetry Society of America’s 2001 Shelley Memorial Award and Poets and Writers “Writers Exchange 2001” Contest. He currently serves as a mentor in the PEN Emerging Writers program.

He was a member of the 2000 and 2001 Independent Spirit Awards Nominating Committees, and has served as a Creative Advisor to the Sundance Institute Writers Fellowship Program and the Independent Feature Films West Screenwriters Lab.

Alexie has been featured on a number of television programs, such as The News Hour with Jim Lehrer program "A Dialogue on Race with President Clinton,” Politically Incorrect, 60 Minutes II, NOW with Bill Moyers for which he wrote a special segment on insomnia and his writing process, and most recently on The Oprah Winfrey Show.