James Welch (writer)

James Phillip Welch Jr. (November 18, 1940 – August 4, 2003), who grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents, was a Native American novelist and poet, considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance. His novel Fools Crow (1986) received several national literary awards, and his debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 2013.

• Scattered in the wind
  Earthboy calls me from my dreams:
  Dirt is where the dreams must end.
  • Winter in the Blood. Harper & Row. 1974. ISBN 978-0-06-451990-8. 

• (Do you remember the first Native writers you read?) LE: Yes. James Welch's Winter in the Blood came out in 1972...Winter in the Blood blew me away. That book told me about myself and my life. The portrait of his grandmother was unforgettable. I could never forget his description of her hands. Like the claws of a tiny crow. The writing was spare, bleak, comical. My world.
  • Louise Erdrich, interview in The writer's library: the authors you love on the books that changed their lives by Nancy Pearl Jeff Schwager (2020)

• I took to James Welch's poetry and novels to find the wryest of humor to counter dread and loss.
  • Joy Harjo Catching the Light (2022)