Karen Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during the preceding calendar year.
Osage County is the largest county by area in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. Created in 1907 when Oklahoma was admitted as a state, the county is named for and is home to the federally recognized Osage Nation. The county is coextensive with the Osage Nation Reservation, established by treaty in the 19th century when the Osage relocated there from Kansas. The county seat is in Pawhuska, one of the first three towns established in the county. The total population of the county as of 2020 was 45,818.
Pawhuska is a city in and the county seat of Osage County, Oklahoma, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 2,984. It was named after the 19th-century Osage chief, Paw-Hiu-Skah, which means "White Hair" in English. The Osage tribal government, which opened offices in Pawhuska in 1872 when its reservation was established in Indian Territory, continues to be based in Pawhuska.
Barbara Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
The Poisonwood Bible (1998), by Barbara Kingsolver, is a best-selling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River.
Geraldine Brooks is an Australian-American journalist and novelist whose 2005 novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The Bean Trees is the first novel by American writer Barbara Kingsolver. It was published in 1988 and reissued in 1998. The novel is followed by the sequel Pigs in Heaven.
The Osage Indian murders were a series of murders of Osage in Osage County, Oklahoma, during the 1910s–1930s. Newspapers described the increasing number of unsolved murders and deaths among young adults as the "Reign of Terror". Most took place from 1921 to 1926. Some sixty or more wealthy, full-blood Osage persons were reported killed from 1918 to 1931. Newer investigations indicate that other suspicious deaths during this time could have been misreported or covered-up murders, including those of individuals who were heirs to future fortunes. Further research has shown that the death toll may have been in the hundreds.
The Osage Nation, is a Midwestern American tribe of the Great Plains. The tribe developed in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys around 700 B.C. along with other groups of its language family. They migrated west after the 17th century, settling near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as a result of Iroquois expansion into the Ohio Country in the aftermath of the Beaver Wars.
William King Hale was an American political and crime boss in Osage County, Oklahoma, who was responsible for the Osage Indian murders, for which he was later convicted. He made a fortune through cattle ranching, contract killings, and insurance fraud.
Linda K. Hogan is an American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's writer in residence. Hogan is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Tracy S. Letts is an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. He started his career at the Steppenwolf Theatre before making his Broadway debut as a playwright for August: Osage County (2007), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. As an actor, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for the Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2013).
Fred Grove was a Native American author and winner of five prestigious "Spur Awards" from Western Writers of America for his western novels. He was born in Hominy, Oklahoma.
Mitch Berman is an American fiction writer known for his imaginative range, exploration of characters beyond the margins of society, lush prose style and dark humor.
The Lacuna is a 2009 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It is Kingsolver's sixth novel, and won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Library of Virginia Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the 2011 International Dublin Literary Award. Kingsolver won the 2010 Women's Prize for Fiction for the novel.
Native American literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by Native Americans in what is now the United States, from pre-Columbian times through to today. Famous authors include N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, D'Arcy McNickle, James Welch, Charles Eastman, Mourning Dove, Zitkala-Sa, John Rollin Ridge, Lynn Riggs, Hanay Geiogamah, William Apess, Samson Occom, Gerald Vizenor, Stephen Graham Jones, et al. Importantly, it is not "a" literature, but a set of literatures, since every tribe has its own cultural traditions. Since the 1960s, it has also become a significant field of literary studies, with academic journals, departments, and conferences devoted to the subject.
United States v. Ramsey, 271 U.S. 467 (1926), was a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the government had the authority to prosecute crimes against Native Americans (Indians) on reservation land that was still designated Indian Country by federal law. The Osage Indian Tribe held mineral rights that were worth millions of dollars. A white rancher, William K. Hale, devised a plot to kill tribal members to allow his nephew, who was married to a tribal member, to inherit the mineral rights. The tribe requested the assistance of the federal government, which sent Bureau of Investigation agents to solve the murders. Hale and several others were arrested and tried for the murders, but they claimed that the federal government did not have jurisdiction. The district court quashed the indictments, but on appeal, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that the Osage lands were Indian Country and that the federal government therefore had jurisdiction. This put an end to the Osage Indian murders.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is a 2017 nonfiction book by American journalist David Grann about the Osage murders. Time magazine listed Killers of the Flower Moon as one of its top ten nonfiction books of 2017.
Demon Copperhead is a 2022 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Kingsolver was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield. While Kingsolver's novel is similarly about a boy who experiences poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues.
