31 Native American Authors to Read Right Now

In October, Oprah named U.S. Poet Laureate (and Super Soul Sunday guest) Joy Harjo’s anthology of Native American poetry as one of the seven books that gets her through hard times. Featuring the work of 161 Indigenous poets, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry demonstrates the diversity within the Native American community—and its literary power.

“I always think of Native literature as a gift to the world,” Molly McGlennen, a poet and Vassar professor tells OprahMag.com. McGlennen is a member of the Ojibwe tribe, along with fellow writers Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, David Treuer, and more. “Telling our own stories on our own terms is a political act. Native writers and artists allow non-Indigenous people to reckon with what’s been obfuscated from their consciousness. Whether you know it or not, you benefit from violence against Native peoples.”

Generally speaking, the “Native American Renaissance” refers to the period in the late ‘60 and ‘70s that many Native American writers, like Erdrich, Harjo, and Leslie Marmon Silko, rose to prominence. But Indian Americans have been in print long before N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for House Made of Dawn in 1969 and kicked-off the so-called Renaissance, as this collection of Indigenous poetry up to the year 1930 shows. And Native literature dates back even farther. “We’ve always had forms of expression, whether that's through oral tradition, petroglyphs, pictographs, codices, or birch bark scrolls,” McGlennan says.

Now, besides the already famous artists, publishing is seeing another rise of new voices, with novelists Tommy Orange, short story writers like Kali Fajardo-Anstine, memoirists such as Terese Mailhot, essayists like Elissa Washuta and Billy-Ray Belcourt, and poets including Tommy Pico and Natalie Diaz, among many others. Further, there are Indigenous authors working in every genre, from mysteries to YA and nonfiction. “There’s an explosion of talent,” McGlennen says. “It feels like there’s a real freedom to express in the ways that they want to express because they don’t feel they’re alone in doing this.”

Given this range, McGlennen cautions against using “Native American literature” as a lump term. After all, there are 574 federally recognized Indigenous tribal nations in the mainland United States alone, and therefore no unified Native American perspective or approach to literature. “If you’re from a particular nation, that means that you have own language, your own relationship to the federal government, your own religion, and your own cultural views,” McGlennen says.

The Native American authors listed below, from popular household names to up-and-comers, demonstrate the breadth of the literary tradition—and why your "to be read" list is going to get a whole lot longer.