Louise Erdrich grew up in North Dakota and is of German-American and Ojibwe descent. She is the author of fourteen novels as well as numerous volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Love Medicine won the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Plague of Doves earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination; and her latest novel, the New York Times bestseller The Round House, won the 2012 National Book Award. BABEL readers will be focusing on The Round House which chronicles a young boy's coming-of-age on a Native American reservation following the violent rape of his mother. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore.