Sherman Alexie, senior artist in residence in the Department of American Ethnic Studies, knows a thing or two about awards. He's won the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award, and a bevy of other honors. Now he adds the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction to his resume.
Alexie received the award for his latest book, War Dances, a collection of structurally inventive pieces on the themes of love, betrayal, familial relationships, race, and class. The stories are interspersed with poems which refract their themes or topics.
The book was selected by three judges—Rilla Askew, Kyoko Mori, and Al Young—who considered close to 350 novels and short story collections by American authors published in the U.S. during the 2009 calendar year. Submissions came from over 90 publishing houses, including small and academic presses.
Judge Al Young describes War Dances as a "rollicking, bittersweet gem of a book.” He says, “War Dances taps every vein and nerve, every tissue, every issue that quickens the current blood-pulse: parenthood, divorce, broken links, sex, gender and racial conflict, substance abuse, medical neglect, 9/11, Official Narrative vs. What Really Happened, settler religion vs. native spirituality; marketing, shopping, and war, war, war."
Alexie is the author of four novels, three prior short story collections, numerous books of poetry, documentaries, and films.
The PEN/Faulkner Award is America’s largest peer juried prize for fiction in the United
States. As winner, Alexie receives $15,000. Past winners include E.L. Doctorow, Ann Patchett, Philip Roth, John Updike, and John Edgar Wideman, among others.