2023 – WRITING

Leslie Marmon Silko, Laguna Pueblo, is an acclaimed novelist, poet, and essayist. She was a recipient of the 1994 Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2020 Robert Kirsch Award. Silko was a key figure in the first wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called The Native American Renaissance. Silko garnered early literary acclaim for her short story The Man to Send Rain Clouds, which was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Discovery grant. The story continues to be included in anthologies. During the years 1968 to 1974, Silko wrote and published many short stories and poems that were featured in her book Laguna Woman (1974). Her other publications include Ceremony (1977), Storyteller (1981), and, with the poet James A. Wright, The Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters Between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright (1985). Almanac of the Dead, a novel, appeared in 1991, and a collection of essays, Yellow Woman, and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today, was published in 1996.