SOURCE: Erdrich, Louise, and Jan George. “Interview with Louise Erdrich.” North Dakota Quarterly 53, no. 2 (spring 1985): 240-7.

In the following interview, Erdrich discusses her early works and talks about the life experiences that influence her poetry and fiction.

“If there's a story there, that's enough,” says Louise Erdrich, who brings to life the history and mythology of her people and, therefore, her identity: Chippewa, German, woman, Midwesterner. By juxtaposing and weaving past and present together, Erdrich gives shape to the prairie land and its people in her book of poems, Jacklight, and her novel, Love Medicine (both 1984, Holt, Rinehart & Winston).

She draws on her years in North Dakota to create and recreate characters who endure despite adversity and affliction, who continue simply because they must go on. Erdrich says she is close to the prairie and its people; her life touches all those who live and have lived on...