Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alexie, Sherman (Vol. 154) - Sherman Alexie and Doug Marx (interview date 16 September 1996)

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Sherman Alexie and Doug Marx (interview date 16 September 1996)

SOURCE: Alexie, Sherman, and Doug Marx. “Sherman Alexie: A Reservation of the Mind.”Publishers Weekly (16 September 1996): 39–40.

[In the following interview, Alexie discusses his initiation into literature and his adherence to realism in writing about the American-Indian experience.]

Six years ago, as a 24-year-old student at Washington State University, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, set down his career goals at the insistence of a friend: 1) to publish ten books by age 30; 2) to see a book on the silver screen by 35; and 3) to receive a major literary prize by 40.

With Indian Killer his third prose work, a tragic thriller about the ravages of cultural dilution and dissolution, out this month from Grove/Atlantic, and The Summer of Black Widows, his seventh collection of poetry, out in October from Hanging Loose Press, the first...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Leslie Ullman (review date summer 1993)
   2. Verlyn Klinkenborg (review date 18 June 1995)
   3. Denise Low (review date winter 1996)
   4. Jennifer Gillan (essay date March 1996)
   5. Lee Lemon (review date Spring 1996)
   6. Howard Meredith (review date Spring 1996)
   7. Sherman Alexie and Doug Marx (interview date 16 September 1996)
   8. Madison Smart Bell (review date 17 November 1996)
   9. Sherman Alexie and Erik Himmelsbach (interview date 17 December 1996)
   10. Judith Bolton-Fasman (review date 6 January 1997)
   11. Robert L. Berner (review date spring 1997)
   12. Peter Donahue (essay date Spring 1997)
   13. Ron McFarland (essay date Spring 1997)
   14. Sherman Alexie and John Purdy (interview date 4 October 1997)
   15. Michael Gorra (review date 5 March 1998)
   16. Sherman Alexie and Dennis West and Joan M. West (interview date fall 1998)
   17. Dan Georgakas (review date fall 1998)
   18. Jonathan Levi (review date 18 June 2000)
   19. Jonathan Penner (review date 9 July 2000)
   20. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 20 July 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Sherman Alexie