N. Scott Momaday, referred to as the “Writer Warrior” by one source—was an American author of Kiowa descent and a Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. His life began in Lawton, Oklahoma on a ranch in the Kiowa reservation with his grandparents. He completed his undergrad at the University of New Mexico and his master’s and Ph.D at Stanford University which awarded him a poetry fellowship to the creative writing program.

He became infatuated with literature at a young age which fueled his writing destiny, eventually publishing works in literary criticism, Native American culture, fiction, and poetry. He also spent years teaching on the Apache reservation like his grandparents. His story is one of learning how to successfully exist in the liminal space between two identifying cultures—one of an American western and the other as a Kiowa descendant; he considers himself part of both. For this reason, his works focus on the Native American tradition—as he was raised with Kiowa traditions of his father’s family but also with the Navajo, Apache and Pueblo Indian cultures of the Southwest. During his academic career, his academic writings expertise was centered around authors like Emily Dickinson and Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, in addition to the study of the oral traditions of his people. Growing up having heard the oral traditions of his ancestors, his works focus on the themes in these cultures and the recording of these oral parables. His mother, of Cherokee and English decent, also became a writer and published children’s books.