N. Scott Momaday is the most widely published and read of the Native American writers, and the recipient of the most valued awards and prizes for both his poetry and his prose. A Ph.D. in English literature, he has combined his study of Western literature with the themes as well as the structures of his Kiowa Indian heritage.

Part Blackfoot, part Gros Ventre Indian, Welch finds his subject matter in his Indian heritage and his plots in the human emotions and trials common to all humans. Here, Welch discusses his background, his sources, his vision, and his personal way of particularizing the universal.

The works of Leslie Marmon Silko are strongly rooted in her own matrilineal tribal background. Like all writing of lasting value, they use particular experiences and places to reveal universal truths. Here, Silko discusses her own background and the interrelationship between her smaller, immediate Native American world and the larger, brutal surrounding world.

His life, like his work, was a long time taking root in a place and a culture. Drawing on his Ojibwa heritage, the bitter effects of his father's murder when he was himself still a baby, his intermittent formal education, and his need to reconcile the tribal past with the political present, Vizenor has, poem by poem, story by story, and novel by novel, constructed an impressive oeuvre that marks him as among the most prolific and most intellectually challenging writers of the Native American renaissance.

Focuses on thirteen-year-old Maureen Nachu, who lives on the Fort Apache Reservation in Whiteriver, Arizona. Describes the traditional coming-of-age ceremony for young Apache women, in which they use special dances and prayers. It captures the elaborate preparations for the ceremony: the mystical rituals of the Medicine Man who presides over the dance, the spiritual purification rites in the Sweat Lodge, and the secret midnight appearance of the Crown Dancers