Sherman J. Alexie, Jr., a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He has published 16 books to date, including his most recent collection of short stories, Ten Little Indians.

Shortly after graduating in American Studies from WSU, two of his poetry collections - The Business of Fancydancing and I Would Steal Horses - were published. Alexie's first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1993 and  received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award.

Alexie was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists and won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize for his first novel, Reservation Blues, published in 1995 by Atlantic Monthly Press. His second novel, Indian Killer, published in 1996, also by Atlantic Monthly Press, was named a New York Times Notable Book. In January 1998, the film Smoke Signals, a collaboration between Alexie and Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian, was released at the Sundance Film Festival.

Alexie resides with his wife and son in Seattle, WA.