Leslie Marmon Silko was born on the outskirts of the Laguna Pueblo reservation in New Mexico in 1948. Her heritage is a mix of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican and Anglo-American. The daughter of a photographer and a teacher, Silko was deeply influenced by her Native American ancestry. In 1969, she received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of New Mexico and published her first short story, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds.” She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Discovery Grant for the piece, leading her to leave law school in order to pursue her literary career. Silko’s writing style is largely based on her identity as a Laguna woman and she is known as one of the most famous writers of the Native American Renaissance. Her work focuses on the clash between Native American culture and white society.
To learn more about Silko, visit https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/leslie-marmon-silko.
This photo of Leslie Marmon Silko is from the Poetry Foundation.
Original source can be found here.
