estern Writers of America has chosen prolific Oglala/Sicangu Lakota writer Joseph M. Marshall III as its 2023 Owen Wister Award honoree for (a 2009 Spur Award finalist about the Battle of the Little Bighorn) and (a 2007 work about the 1866 Fetterman Fight) and such nonfiction titles as (2007) and (2004). Born in 1945, he was raised on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation. Lakota is his first language, and many of his books relate tribal history, customs and beliefs. “—I thank you very much,” Marshall said on hearing the news. “[This] is an affirmation for me that I pursued the right dream.” Previous Owen Wister honorees include historians Robert M. Utley and Eve Ball and Pulitzer Prize–winning Kiowa writer and poet N. Scott Momaday.
