Tommy Orange

TOMMY ORANGE HOPED HIS PEERS IN HIS Institute of American Indian Arts creative writing program and the Native American writing community would appreciate There There, his debut novel. Maybe other Native people from Oakland, California, where he grew up and where the book is set, would like it too. As ambitious as the book was — with its 12 narrators each telling part of the story from his or her own point of view, the plot and connections between characters gradually clicking into place until the breathtaking action of the climax at a powwow in the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum — his expectations for its reception were modest.

So far, (Knopf, 2018) has been nominated for the National Book Award and the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, earned nearly unanimous critical acclaim, sparked conversations about representation of Native Americans in literature