David Heska Wanbli Weiden is an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. He's a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Tin House Scholar, and the recipient of the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship. A lawyer and professor, he lives in Denver, Colorado, with his family.
Weiden's new novel is Winter Counts.
At The Strand Magazine he tagged seven of the most important crime novels by Native writers, including:
The Sharpest Sight (1995) by Louis Owens (Choctaw-Cherokee).Read about the other entries on the list.
I’d argue that Louis Owens is the most important figure in the genre of Native American crime fiction, as he wrote compelling page-turners that also interrogated questions of identity, culture, and colonization. Nominally the story of the death of Attis McCurtain, The Sharpest Sight’s characters travel between the earthly and spirit worlds as the question of Attis’s murder is resolved. This complex narrative set the stage for a unique indigenous style of suspense fiction that incorporates political, legal, and cultural issues.
--Marshal Zeringue
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