Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. is a Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His works draw heavily on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now resides in Seattle, Washington.

Alexie's best-known book is the semi-autobiographical young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), which won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Odyssey Award as the best 2008 audiobook for young people, read by Alexie himself.

He is also known for The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of short stories that was adapted into the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he penned the screenplay. His first novel, Reservation Blues, earned the 1996 American Book Award.

Furthermore, his 2009 collection of short stories and poems, War Dances, was awarded the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.