Adrian C. Louis
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Adrian C. Louis, Paiute poet
Adrian C. Louis was born and raised in northern Nevada, the eldest of twelve children. A half-breed Indian, he is an enrolled member of the Lovelock Paiute Indian tribe. Adrian is a graduate of Brown University where he also earned an M.A. in Creative Writing.
He is a former journalist and has been the editor of four tribal newspapers, including the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today. He was twice nominated for Print Journalist of the Year by the National Indian Media Consortium. He was also a co-founder of the Native American Journalists Association. In 1999 he was elected to the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
From 1984 until 1997, he taught English and writing at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. Since 1999 he has been an English professor in the Minnesota State University system.
Awards
Adrian was named Writer of the Year in poetry for 2001 by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writer's and Storytellers for his book Ancient Acid Flashes Back. He also received the Cohen Award for the best poem published in Ploughshares in 2001.
Adrian is a recent recipient of the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award, a Bush Foundation Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His 1989 book of poems Fire Water World was a winner of the Poetry Center Book Award from the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. He has received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Nebraska Arts Council in recognition of his "demonstrated excellence and quality in the literary arts in the state of Nebraska" in 1993.
Adrian has held a Resident Fellowship in Poetry at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM in the summer of 1977, an Artists Fellowship from the South Dakota Arts Council in May, 1989, in recognition of "a significant contribution to higher standards in the arts," from the Bush Foundation, St. Paul, MN in May 1990 for "exemplary artistic talent and demonstrated ability in work," and from the National Endowment for the Arts in Jan. 1992, given to "advance the careers of creative writers of exceptional talent."
He was nominated for Journalist of the Year in Print Media for his work as Editor of the Talking Leaf newspaper in Los Angeles for which he received an Honorable Mention at the Seventh Annual National Indian Media Conference in Minneapolis, March 1983. The next year, in Tulsa, he also received an Honorable Mention after being again nominated as Journalist of the Year in Print Media for his work as Managing Editor of the Lakota Times in Pine Ridge, SD.
Writing available online
"ARSe Poetica" in Mississippi Review
Auntie Angie's Cheyenne Affair in Weber Studies
Song of the Snake and Adiós Again, My Blessed Angel of Thunderheads and Urine with RealAudio of Adrian reading. (From the Cortland Review)
Earth Bone Connected to the Spirit Bone, an essay from Ploughshares
"April in Oglala", from Ploughshares
"At Pine Ridge Powwow Grounds", from Ploughshares
This Is the Time of Grasshoppers and All that I See Is Dying from Ploughshares
One of the Grim Reaper's Disguises, from Ploughshares
Adiós Again, My Blessed Angel of Thunderheads and Urine, from Ploughshares
Rhetorical Judea from Ploughshares
Buffalo Spirit Song from Ploughshares
Note to a Culture Vulture from Ploughshares
Three short stories from Wild Indians & Other Creatures
A Somewhat Abbreviated History of an Indian Lycanthrope
Note to a Pine Ridge Girl Who Can No Longer Read
Me and Simon Send Smoke Signals on the Great and Gaseous Internet
Three Poems by Adrian C. Louis in SNReview
Books by Adrian C. Louis
Poetry
Logorrhea, Northwestern University Press.
Deer Dreams, Dragonfly Press. (A fine art, letterpress chapbook)
Evil Corn, New Poems, Ellis Press.
Bone & Juice, Northwestern University Press
Ancient Acid Flashes Back (Western Literature Series), Univ of Nevada Press.
Skull Dance, Bull Thistle Press, Jamaica, VT, 1998.
Ceremonies of the Damned (Western Literature Series), Univ of Nevada Press, 1997.
Vortex of Indian Fevers, Northwestern Univ Press, 1995.
- Book review in Ploughshares
Blood Thirsty Savages, Timeless Press, 1993.
- Book review in Ploughshares
- Book review in Weber studies
Days of Obsidian, Days of Grace, with Jim Northrup, Al Hunter, and Denise Sweet, 1994, Poetry Harbor Press.
Among the Dog Eaters, West End Press, 1992.
- A review of Among the Dog Eaters by Leslie Ulman from the Kenyon Review
Fire Water World: Poems, West End Press, 1989.
Sweets for the Dancing Bears, Blue Cloud Abbey Press, 1979.
Muted War Drums, Blue Cloud Abbey Press, 1977,
The Indian Cheap Wine Seance, Gray Flannel Press, 1974.
Prose
Wild Indians & Other Creatures (Western Literature Series), Univ of Nevada Press, 1996.
Skins: A Novel , Crown Pub. , 1995.
Anthologies
How to Be This Man: The Walter Pavlich Memorial Poetry Anthology, Swan Scythe Press.
Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American, 1998, Viking Penguin.
Desert Scroll: Nevada Fiction Writers, 1998, University of Nevada Press.
Literacy Matters: Writing in the Second Wave of Multiculturalism, 1997, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Changer l'Amerique, 1997, Maison de la Poesie, France.
Native American Songs and Poems: An Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions), Brian Swann (Editor), Dover Pubns.
In Their Own Voices: A Century of Recorded Poetry, ed. Rebecca Presson, Vol. 4, CD Album, Rhino Records, 1996.
The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses: 1994 - 1995, Vol. XIX, Bill Henderson (Editor), Pushcart Press.
Scars: American Poetry in the Face of Violence, 1995, University of Alabama Press.
Atomic Ghosts, 1994, Coffee House Press.
Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, Maria M. Gillan, Jennifer Gillan (Editors), Penguin USA
Studies in American Indian Literature, 1993, University of Richmond Press.
New Poets of the 90's, 1992, David R. Godine Publishing.
Desert Wood: An Anthology of Nevada Poets (Western Literature Series), Shaun T. Griffin (Editor), Univ of Nevada Press.
Circle of Motion: Arizona Anthology of Contemporary American Indian Literature, K. Sands (Editor), Arizona Historical Foundation.
The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature, Geary Hobson (Editor), Univ of New Mexico Press
Songs from This Earth on Turtle's Back: An Anthology of Poetry by American Indian Writers, Joseph Bruchac (Editor), Greenfield Review Press
The Clouds Threw This Light, 1978, IAIA Press.
Interviews
Adrian C. Louis - Poet of Survival, Robert Berner, in World Literature Today [PDF]
Speaking the Unspoken: An Interview with Adrian C. Louis, by Michael Wilson, 1996, Native Americas: Akwe:kon's Journal of Indigenous Issues, Vol. XIII, No. 3, p60.
Audio Recordings
In Their Own Voices: A Century of Recorded Poetry, ed. Rebecca Presson, Vol. 4, CD Album, Rhino Records, 1996.
See Also
Adrian C. Louis on the Modern American Poetry website
Cohen Award for the best poem published in Ploughshares in 2001
Profile of Adrian from Time Being Books.
A short biography from the Internet Public Library's Native American Author's Project
This page is part of the Storytellers: Native American Authors Online project.
