Photo by Jenn Ackerman
Little Falls, Minnesota author Louise Erdrich won the 33rd annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, which is given out annually to an individual who, as is stated on the award’s website, “made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” The award was established in 1994 through the will of actress Lillian Gish. Previous recipients include Spike Lee, Bob Dylan, and Isabel Allende.
“This year’s selection committee is thrilled to award the Gish Prize to Louise Erdrich, whose significant literary output has largely focused on the Ojibwe people of the northern Midwest,” selection committee member Sara Reisman said in a prepared statement. “As someone born and raised in Minneapolis, I am personally proud to recognize Erdrich, as her writing has had an indelible effect on my understanding of Indigenous life, in a place where its history was largely obscured. Adjacent to her writing practice is Birchbark Books, a community-based teaching bookstore with international presence that amplifies the work of Native and non-Native writers, with the distinct mission to be other, which denotes a form of beauty that celebrates that which makes each of us different.”
Erdrich, who is Native American and won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her novel “The Night Watchmen,” will officially receive the award sometime in this fall.
“It is hard to express my joy at being awarded this prize, and it is humbling to be counted among those who have received this honor. In making her bequest, Lillian Gish wrote about beauty, a word not often used now in talking about artistic achievement. We speak instead about novelty, innovation, iconoclasm. But in many ways, I am always trying to find a pathway into ‘the beauty of the world,’ which includes grief and everything else that is difficult to praise,” Louise Erdrich said in a prepared statement. “I work with my sisters and daughters to make books and put them into peoples’ hands. We and the hard-working staff all support Birchbark Books in an effort to celebrate and distribute Indigenous books to schools, prisons, local clinics, and readers everywhere. So, I am moved that Lillian chose to include her sister in titling this award, and that she speaks of all who work in the name of art.”
