N. Scott Momaday

Navarre Scott Momaday (February 27, 1934 - January 24, 2024) was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. When he was one year old, his parents moved from the Kiowa Indian reservation to Arizona. He graduated from the University of New Mexico, and continued on to Stanford University, where he received a poetry fellowship for Creative Writing. In 1963, he received a doctorate in English literature. He taught at the Universities of Stanford, Arizona, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Barbara, and was a visiting professor at Columbia, Princeton, and in Moscow. At UC Berkeley, he designed the graduate program for Indian Studies.

His first novel, House Made of Dawn received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969. In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded him with the National Medal of Arts for his works that embrace and celebrate Native American culture. Throughout Momaday’s life, he was honored with many prestigious awards, including the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a fellowship for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds twelve honorary degrees from American colleges and universities.

He lived in Tucson and taught at the University of Arizona from 1982 to 2005.