Alexie excelled academically, reading everything available, including auto repair manuals. Because of his health problems, he was excluded from many of the activities that are rites of passage for young Indian males. Until the age of seven, Alexie had seizures and bedwetting he had to take strong drugs to control them.

They called him 'The Globe' because his head was larger than usual, due to his hydrocephalus as an infant. Īlexie has described his life at the reservation school as challenging, as he was constantly teased by other kids and endured abuse he described as 'torture' from white nuns who taught there. To support her six children, Alexie's mother, Lillian, sewed quilts, worked as a clerk at the Wellpinit Trading Post, and had some other jobs. His father often left the house on drinking binges for days at a time. His parents were alcoholics, though his mother achieved sobriety. Alexie's surgery was successful he did not experience mental damage but He had to have brain surgery when he was six months old, and was at high risk of death or mental disabilities if he survived. Alexie was born with hydrocephalus, a condition that occurs when there is an abnormally large amount of cerebral fluid in the brain's ventricular system. One of his paternal great-grandfathers was of Russian descent. His father, Sherman Joseph Alexie, was a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe, and his mother, Lillian Agnes Cox, was of Colville, Choctaw, Spokane and European American ancestry. As a child he lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Early life Īlexie was born at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Washington. His 2009 collection of short stories and poems, War Dances, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people (read by Alexie). His first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), is a semi-autobiographical novel that won the 2007 U.S. His first novel, Reservation Blues, received a 1996 American Book Award. It was adapted as the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he also wrote the screenplay. His best-known book is The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of short stories. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington.

His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. (born October 7, 1966) is a Spokane- Coeur d'Alene-Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker.

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Native American literature, humor, documentary fiction

The part time indian