James Welch

An item at American Writers Museum

Part Blackfeet and part Gros Ventre, James Welch drew upon a childhood on a Montana Indian reservation for his first published book, the poetry collection Riding the Earthboy 40 (1971). It was, however, the novel Winter in the Blood (1974) that brought Welch national attention. "An unnervingly beautiful book," according to The New York Review of Books, it featured a nameless, self-destructive Gros Ventre narrator.

Themes of identity and conflict reverberate throughout Welch's work. In the novel Fool's Crow (1986), set during the 1870s, a young Blackfeet debates assimilation to white culture. Welch, wrote Don Lee in Ploughshares, made "it his lifework ... to illuminate the richness of his culture and the heartache of its dislocation."

AMERICAN VOICES

An exhibit at American Writers Museum

American writing is distinctive, diverse, and comes in many forms from across the nation. The 100 authors featured here represent the evolution of American writing. Learn more about each writer on the timeline by turning the panels below their portraits. Explore centuries of writing by pulling, turning, and touching the interactive elements on the counter.

This is not meant to be a list of the greatest or most influential writers. Instead, we present authors and works as part of the American story as it grows and changes. Taken together, this rich literary heritage reflects America in all of its complexity: its energy, hope, conflict, disillusionment, and creativity.

American Writers Museum