Born in Little Falls, Minnesota in 1954, Louise Erdrich is the daughter of a German-American father and a Chippewa Indian mother. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota where both her parents taught at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. While a part of the culture, Erdrich and her family did not live on a reservation but frequently visited one as well as being raised Catholic. In 1972 she began at Dartmouth University and was one of the first women admitted to the university, graduating in 1976 with a BA in English. She then went on to pursue a master&#8217;s from Johns Hopkins University, graduating in 1979 the same year that he wrote her first short story The World&#8217;s Greatest Fisherman which would later become the first chapter in her debut novel Love Medicine. 
Love Medicine, published in 1984, would go on to win many awards and accolades including the National Book Critics Circle Award, marking it the only debut novel to ever win that award. It followed the story of five different families, all from the Ojibwe tribe, influenced by her childhood and subsequent research into her ancestry. She would later shift away from Native American themes while writing her 2003 novel The Master Butchers Singing Club, but would ultimately return for later works such as 2012’s The Round House and 2016’s LaRose. 
Besides being a novelist she is also a distinguished poet, publishing her first collection of poems, Jacklight, in 1984, which focuses on the discourse and difference between Native and non-Native cultures, family, and friendship, as well as a look into the influence of Ojibwa folklore.