NORMAL -- Writer Louise Erdrich visited the Twin Cities on Thursday to share stories of how she's developed her craft and how she explores the complexity of American Indian cultures within wider American society.

The author of "The Plague of the Doves," which was nominated for a 2009 Pulitzer Prize, and "Love Medicine," a 1984 National Book Critic Circles Award winner, was the annual Ames/Milner visiting author.

Erdrich, who has mixed European and American Indian ancestry, is an enrolled Turtle Mountain Chippewa.

The writer led an afternoon question-and-answer session that drew about 200 people to Illinois State University's Milner Library. An evening talk at Illinois Wesleyan University completed her itinerary.

Before taking questions from the crowd at ISU, Erdrich read a selection from her short story collection "The Red Convertible," focusing on Lipshaw Morrissey and his life on a North Dakota reservation.

In today's wired world "it's more and more important that authors go out and meet readers and read to readers," she said before sharing the excerpt.

Later, Erdrich fielded audience questions. People were curious about character development, her role in publishing Ojibwa language works, and a decision to re-release "Love Medicine" with changes.

When asked to name some of her favorite authors, she said she likes many, ranging from from Joseph Conrad to Louise Gluck to Sherman Alexie.

Of her own works, she said she has a special fondness for "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse," the story of an early 20th century North Dakota missionary priest who turns out to be a woman.

Cheryl Elzy, ISU university libraries dean, said Thursday's event marked the final year of the collaboration between Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan's Ames Library on the visiting authors program.

But she said next fall ISU would launch a similar Milner/Twin Cities Visiting Author Program - with Normal and Bloomington public libraries and Barnes & Noble Booksellers as partners.

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About Louise Erdrich

Hometown: Minneapolis, Minn.; born 1954, in Little Falls, Minn., raised in Wahpeton, N.D.

Heritage: Member of Turtle Mountain Chippewa nation. Her father was German American, and her mother French and American Indian.

Work: Author of 12 novels in addition to children's stories, poetry collections, short stories and works of nonfiction. Erdrich's work has been translated into 14 languages. She is owner of a Minneapolis bookstore, The Birchbark.

SOURCE: www.bookbrowse.com