Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie, now 46 years old, is the author of many books and movies including The Lone Ranger and Tonto fist Fight in Heaven (1993), his first novel Reservation Blues (1995), Smoke Signals (1998), and of course The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007). Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He was born hydrocephalic and had an operation when he six months old that he was not expected to survive. He had seizures throughout his childhood. In eighth grade, he decided to go to Reardan High School, located twenty miles away from the reservation. After high school, Alexie attended Spokane’s Jesuit Gonzaga University and then transferred to Washington State University in 1987, which is where he started to write poetry and fiction. Alexie's writing often revolves around the despair and struggles of Native Americans and their lives on reservations, a topic he can relate to, while still including and element of irony, or humour.