Louise Erdrich, Who Just Published Her 16th Novel, Is The ‘Great American Novelist’

Ann Patchett thinks she’ll win the Nobel Prize someday. She’s published 30 books – nonfiction, children’s novels, and more. Sherman Alexie says she writes entertaining hyperrealistic literary fiction. And she owns a bookstore. “In a strange way, Louise Erdrich is perhaps our least famous great American writer; she is not reclusive, but she is reticent, and her public appearances give the impression of a carefully controlled performance. But Erdrich has also shared many of her most intimate emotions and experiences, in some form, in her novels.”