It's the birthday of one on my favorite writers.

From The Writer's Almanac
Literary and Historical Notes:

It's the birthday of the poet and novelist Louise Erdrich, (books by this author) born in Little Falls, Minnesota (1954). Her father was of German descent, her mother a Chippewa Indian. She grew up in North Dakota, where her parents were both teachers at a Bureau of Indian Affairs school.

She studied creative writing at Dartmouth. After college, she decided not to go into teaching as she had planned. Instead, she wrote poetry, and supported herself hoeing sugar beets, picking cucumbers, babysitting, life guarding, selling fried chicken, waitressing and short order cooking. She was even once a girl with a flag at a construction site on the highway.

She switched from poetry to fiction. One of her first short stories began to grow in her mind and became her first novel Love Medicine, about two Indian families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. She created those two families and then went on to write several more novels about them and their imaginary reservation in North Dakota, including The Beet Queen, The Bingo Palace, Tracks, and others.

Louise Erdrich said, "Writing became a way for me to talk about myself—or a character—in a really personal, surprising manner without any embarrassment. I was brought up to be an incredibly nice person, but not everything I wanted to say was nice."
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For polite conversations sake they are leaving out the suicide of her husband Michael Dorris in 1997. Michael created the first Native American Studies program ar Dartmouth, was one of the first single fathers to adopt, and put fetal alcohol syndrome on the national map (as his three adopted children had it). Charges were brought against him in 97 for child abuse, but his suicide halted that process. Many see his suicide as a confession, but his close friends deny the possibility.