36 Native American women writers

Ai Ogawa was an American poet and educator who won the 1999 National Book Award for Poetry for Vice: New and Selected Poems. Ai is known for her mastery of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form, as well as for taking on dark, controversial topics in her work. About writing in the dramatic monologue form, she's said: "I want to take the narrative 'persona' poem as far as I can, and I've never been one to do things in halves. All the way or nothing. I won't abandon that desire."

Paula Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, literary critic, activist, professor, and novelist. Of mixed-race European-American, Native American, and Arab-American descent, she identified with her mother's people, the Laguna Pueblo and childhood years. She drew from its oral traditions for her fiction poetry and also wrote numerous essays on its themes. She edited four collections of Native American traditional stories and contemporary works and wrote two biographies of Native American women.

Zara Cisco Brough (1919–1988), often spelled as Zara Ciscoe Brough, commonly referred to as Princess White Flower, served as the Chief of the Nipmuc Native Indian Tribe for 25 years from 1962 until 1987. She is best known for her work to preserve Nipmuc heritage, especially her letter of intention to petition for federal recognition of the Nipmuc as a legally distinct Native American people, which resulted in the Nipmuc being placed on "active consideration" for the status of Federally recognized tribe by 11 July 1995.

Olivia Ward Bush-Banks was an American author, poet and journalist of African-American and Montaukett Native American descent. Ward celebrated both of her heritages in her poetry and writing. She was a regular contributor to the Colored American magazine and wrote a column for the New Rochelle, New York publication, the Westchester Record-Courier.

Sophia Alice Callahan (Muscogee) was a novelist and teacher. Her novel, Wynema, A Child of the Forest (1891) is thought "to be the first novel written by a Native American woman." Shocked about the Massacre at Wounded Knee at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which took place about six months before she published her book, Callahan added an account of this and the 1890 Ghost Dance of the Lakota to her book in the first fictional treatment of these subjects.

Adela Calva Reyes was an indigenous Mexican writer, author and playwright of the Otomi people.

Ella Cara Deloria, , also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, was an educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist of European American and Native American ancestry. She recorded Native American oral history and legends, and she also contributed to the study of Native American languages. According to Cotera (2008), Deloria was "a pre-eminent expert on D/L/Nakota cultural religious, and linguistic practices." In the 1940s, Deloria wrote a novel titled Waterlily, which was published in 1988, and republished in 2009.

Natalie Diaz is a queer, Latinx and Mojave American poet, language activist, former professional basketball player, and educator. She is enrolled in the Gila River Indian Community and identifies as Akimel O'odham.

Heid Ellen Erdrich is an Ojibwe writer and editor of poetry, short stories, and nonfiction, and maker of poem films.

Louise Erdrich is an American author, writer of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of the Anishinaabe.

Joy Harjo is a poet, musician, playwright, and author. She is the incumbent United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She is also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to serve three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

Suzan Shown Harjo is an advocate for American Indian rights. She is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, and policy advocate, who has helped Native peoples recover more than one million acres (4,000 km²) of tribal lands. After co-producing the first Indian news show in the nation for WBAI radio while living in New York City, and producing other shows and theater, in 1974 she moved to Washington, DC, to work on national policy issues. She served as Congressional liaison for Indian affairs in the President Jimmy Carter administration and later as president of the National Council of American Indians.

LaDonna Vita Tabbytite Harris is a Comanche Native American social activist and politician from Oklahoma. She is the founder and president of Americans for Indian Opportunity. Harris was a vice presidential candidate for the Citizens Party in the 1980 United States presidential election alongside Barry Commoner. She was the first Native American woman to run for vice president. In 2018, she became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame.

Linda K. Hogan is a poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's Writer in Residence. Hogan is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. She lives in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.

Marsha Hunt is an American actress, novelist, singer and former model, who has lived mostly in Britain and Ireland. She achieved national fame when she appeared in London as Dionne in the long-running rock musical Hair. She enjoyed close relationships with Marc Bolan and Mick Jagger, who is the father of her only child Karis.

Joan Naviyuk Kane is an Inupiaq American poet. In 2014, Kane was the Indigenous Writer-in-Residence at the School for Advanced Research. She was also a judge for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize. Kane was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2018.

Winona LaDuke is an American environmentalist, economist, writer and industrial hemp grower, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development.

Layli Long Soldier is an Oglala Lakota poet, writer, feminist, artist, and activist.

Wilma Pearl Mankiller was an American Cherokee activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Christine Quintasket or Hum-ishu-ma, better known by her author name Mourning Dove, was a Native American author best known for her 1927 novel Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range and her 1933 work Coyote Stories.

Nora Naranjo Morse is a Native American potter and poet. She currently resides in Espanola, New Mexico just north of Santa Fe and is a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo. Her work can be found in several museum collections including the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota, and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, where her hand-built sculpture piece, Always Becoming, was selected from more than 55 entries submitted by Native artists as the winner of an outdoor sculpture competition held in 2005. In 2014, she was honored with a NACF Artist Fellowship for Visual Arts and was selected to prepare temporal public art for the 5x5 Project by curator Lance Fung.

nila northSun is a Native American poet and tribal historian.

Pretty Shield (1856–1944) was a medicine woman of the Crow Nation. Her biography, perhaps the first record of female Native American life, was written by Frank B. Linderman, who interviewed her using an interpreter and sign language.

Polingaysi Qöyawayma, also known as Elizabeth Q. White, was a Hopi educator, writer, and potter.

Debbie Reese is a Nambé Pueblo scholar and educator. Reese founded American Indians in Children's Literature, which analyzes representations of Native and Indigenous peoples in children's literature. She co-edited a young adult adaptation of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States with Jean Mendoza in 2019.

Katherine Siva Saubel was a Native American scholar, educator, tribal leader, author, and activist committed to preserving her Cahuilla history, culture and language. Her efforts focused on preserving the language of the Cahuilla. Saubel is acknowledged nationally and internationally as one of California's most respected Native American leaders. She received an honorary PhD in philosophy from La Sierra University, Riverside, California, and was awarded the Chancellor's Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the University of California at the University of California, Riverside.

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, also known as Bamewawagezhikaquay is the one of earliest Native American literary writers. She was of Ojibwa and Scots-Irish ancestry. Her Ojibwa name can also be written as O-bah-bahm-wawa-ge-zhe-go-qua, meaning "Woman of the Sound [that the stars make] Rushing Through the Sky." From babaam- 'place to place' or bimi- 'along', wewe- 'makes a repeated sound', giizhig 'sky', and ikwe 'woman'. She lived most of her life in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

Leslie Marmon Silko is an American writer. A Laguna Pueblo Indian woman, she is one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.

Cynthia Leitich Smith is a New York Times best-selling author of fiction for children and young adults. A member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, she writes fiction for children centered on the lives of modern-day American Indians. These books are taught widely by teachers in elementary, middle school, high school, and college classrooms. In addition, Smith writes fanciful, humorous picture books and gothic fantasies for ages 14-up. Regarded as an expert in children's-YA literature by the press, she also hosts a website for Children's Literature Resources. Smith is a current faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts, teaching in the Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA program.

Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon was a Mohegan medicine woman, anthropologist, author, tribal council member, and elder based in Connecticut.

Luci Tapahonso is a Navajo poet and a lecturer in Native American Studies. She is the first poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, succeeded by Laura Tohe.

Laura Tohe is a Native American author and poet. She is poet laureate of the Navajo Nation for 2015–2019, and is a professor emerita of English at Arizona State University.

Wahnenauhi was a Cherokee woman whose writings on the history and culture of Cherokee Indian people were published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1889. Her collection of writings, entitled Historical Sketches of the Cherokees, Together with Some of their Customs, Traditions, and Superstitions, features historical accounts, legends, traditional practices, and stories that highlight aspects of Cherokee culture. Whanenauhi wrote the manuscript at a time when Cherokee acculturation into white society was heavily encouraged by her peers, and her work is often considered a backlash against that attitude.

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was a Northern Paiute author, activist and educator.

Hanya K Yanagihara is an American novelist, editor, and travel writer. She grew up in Hawaii.

Zitkála-Šá (1876–1938), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, her missionary-given and later married name, was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist. She wrote several works chronicling her struggles with cultural identity and the pull between the majority culture she was educated within and her Dakota culture into which she was born and raised. Her later books were among the first works to bring traditional Native American stories to a widespread white English-speaking readership, and she has been noted as one of the most influential Native American activists of the 20th century.