N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, to a father of Kiowa Indian heritage and a mother of European and Cherokee heritage. He spent much of his childhood on Navajo, Apache, and Jemez Pueblo reservations in the Southwest, where his parents taught. He earned his BA from the University of New Mexico and a MA and PhD from Stanford University. His first novel House Made of Dawn (1968) won a Pulitzer Prize and brought attention to Momaday as a leading figure in a Native American literary renaissance. His subsequent works have shown what richness and power can result from blending Native-American oral traditions with classical European forms. Those works include more than 13 books of poetry, plays, prose, and children’s stories. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Momaday has been awarded numerous honors, including a National Medal of Arts, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and 12 honorary degrees. He is the Regents Professor of the Humanities at the University of Arizona, where he has taught since 1982.