Criticism > Poetry > Erdrich, Louise - Louise Erdrich and Miriam Berkley (interview date 15 August 1986)

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Louise Erdrich and Miriam Berkley (interview date 15 August 1986)

SOURCE: Erdrich, Louise, and Miriam Berkley. “PW Interviews: Louise Erdrich.” Publishers Weekly 230 (August 15, 1986): 58-9.

[In the following interview, Erdrich discusses the development of her career and her collaboration with husband Michael Dorris.]

When Louise Erdrich was a child in North Dakota, her father encouraged her to write by paying her a nickel a story. Once in a while, a story found its way into a book hand-sewn by her mother. Still, she had no urge to be a writer, she says, “until I got to college and found I wasn't much good at anything else.” If Erdrich is, one suspects, being unduly modest about her nonliterary achievements, there can be no doubt about her talent as a writer. Within a single year, 1984, when she was 30, her first collection of poetry, Jacklight, and her first novel, Love Medicine—both published by...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Louise Erdrich and Jan George (interview date spring 1985)
   2. James McKenzie (review date spring 1985)
   3. Vernon Shetley (review date April 1985)
   4. Richard K. Waters (review date 1985)
   5. Michael Loudon (review date winter 1986)
   6. Elaine Jahner (review date 1986)
   7. Louise Erdrich and Miriam Berkley (interview date 15 August 1986)
   8. Louise Erdrich and Joseph Bruchac (interview date 1987)
   9. Helen Jaskoski (review date winter 1991)
   10. Carolyn Dunn (review date 1993)
   11. P. Jane Hafen (essay date summer 1996)
   12. Robin Riley Fast (essay date 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Louise Erdrich
2. How to Analyze a Poem
3. Poetry