Louise Erdrich is 2021 winner of the $35,000 Aspen Words literary prize for her novel “The Night Watchman.”
The prize is an annual award for an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture. It is one of the largest literary prizes in the U.S. and one of the few focused exclusively on fiction with a social impact.
Erdrich, owner of Birchbark Books bookstore in Minneapolis, is author of 16 novels, volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her work has won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics circle Award twice, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa.
“The Night Watchman” is based on Erdrich’s grandfather, who joined others to fight 1953 national legislation that would have terminated the rights of Indians and ended their very identities. The night watchman fought the government from North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C.
In announcing Erdrich as winner this week, literary prize judge Luis Alberto Urrea called Erdrich’s novel “a magisterial summation of (the author’s) influential work while at the same time setting a new foundation for the future. A historical novel that is also a story of love, a familial chronicle, a book about indigenous community and anti-tribal animus, it opens worlds incessantly. It can move from comedic visions of eccentric boxers to terrifying stories of disappearances of Native women, hints of ghost stories and a prophetic explosion of violence inside the nation’s capital city. It is a wise and transformative master work.”
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April 25, 2021 at 05:05AM
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Louise Erdrich wins literary prize focused on fiction with a social impact - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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