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Sherman Alexie's War Dances has been selected as the winner of the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Excellent.

Read more from the Seattle Times.

War Dances

Sherman Alexie's War Dances is a finalist for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. It's about time. The winner will be announced March 23rd.

Last year Alexie published a tremendous book of poetry entitled Face. One of those rare books, like many of Alexie's, that one should hold onto forever. Another was this 1992 book entitled...

I Would Steal Horses
For Kari

for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born

and where he will die sometime by dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.

I would sign treaties for you, take
every promise as the last lie, the last
point after which we both refuse to exact.

I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.

The Feminist Conundrum

"So do you have men in other rooms studyin' about theirselves?"

"Not necessary. Men are already studied in every kind of study. Women have been forced to study great men ---"

"Maybe that's the problem... Ditch great people! Erase the bastards... from books and stuff. Just do folks - regular ones - the failures." Snowman (1999)

Social Justice?

Reading Carolyn Chute. Finally, someone willing to talk about class. And I like that her husband's backyard target practice "keeps away the same old tired bohemian intelligentsia types."

Anyone up for target practice in my backyard?