James Welch (writer)

On November 18, 2016, Google celebrated his 76th birthday with a Google Doodle.

In her introduction to the 2007 reprint of Winter in the Blood, fellow writer Louise Erdrich said: "It is a central and inspiring text to a generation of western regional and Native American writers, including me."

James Welch died of lung cancer at the age of sixty-two in Missoula, Montana, on Monday, August 4, 2003.

In 1997 Welch received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.

James Welch was an internationally acclaimed writer and had a faithful following in Europe. In 1995, Welch was given the Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters) by the French Cultural Ministry. His novels were translated into nine foreign languages.

He began his writing career publishing poetry and fiction. His novels established his place in the Native American Renaissance literary movement. Welch also taught at the university. He also received Honorary Doctorates from Rocky Mountain College (1993) and the University of Montana (1997).

Unlike Welch's first two novels, Fools Crow (1986) is a historical novel set in the 1870s which depicts the character Fools Crow, striving to live a classic Blackfoot life in the background of the white settlement and the U.S. government's war against Plains Indians.

After writing poetry "exclusively for seven or eight years," Welch turned his attention towards fiction and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, a severe narrative about a nameless youth living on a reservation in northern Montana. Winter in the Blood (1974) attracted immediate critical interest, and, in 1977, scholars discussed the novel at the annual Modern Language Association convention. The notes from the session were released a year after the seminar in a special symposium issue of American Indian Quarterly, edited by Peter G Beidler.

In Winter in the Blood (1974), Welch presents a nameless protagonist who feels displaced, caught between two worlds, helpless in a world of stalking white men, but unaccepted by Indians—a stranger to both. The unnamed narrator is, like Welch, a mix of Blackfoot and Gros Ventre Indian. He calls himself a "servant to a memory of death." (James Welch) Both his father and brother are dead; in the midst of the novel, his deeply loved grandmother also dies. Similarly, in The Death of Jim Loney (1979), Welch portrays a half-blood who is unable to find a place in either world

Welch’s poems are alert, sorrowful, and true. His only collection of poetry, Riding the Earthboy 40 (1971), is deeply ingrained in the steppe of Montana. Shortened but expressive, the poems arrive in an instant of thought or experience that handles seasons, animals, and the stories that reservation Native Americans tell.

In 1968, James Welch married Lois Monk, a comparative literature professor at the University of Montana. She was head of the English Department there until her retirement. During her sabbaticals, they traveled internationally and lived in France, Greece, Italy, and Mexico. Welch often used these periods to help finish his novels, taking advantage of the relative isolation.

In 1958, James Welch graduated from Washburn High School in Minneapolis. Post high school he worked as a firefighter for the U.S Forest Service, as a laborer and as an Upward Bound counselor. Eventually, Welch began a master of fine arts degree program at the University of Montana. It was there that he studied under the poet Richard Hugo, who told him that "his poetry needed roots, so he should write what he knew about. Write about Indians and Indian culture. Write about home" he said. He graduated in 1965 with a B.A. in liberal arts. Shortly after, Welch published his first poem in the "Montana poet" issue of Visions International in 1967. He also briefly attended Northern Montana College.

James Phillip Welch Jr. (November 18, 1940 – August 4, 2003), who grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents, was a Native American novelist and poet, considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance. His novel Fools Crow (1986) received several national literary awards, and his debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 2013.

James Welch was born in Browning, Montana on November 18, 1940. His father, James Phillip Welch Sr. (June 3, 1914 – May 23, 2006), a welder and rancher, was a member of the Blackfeet tribe. His mother, Rosella Marie (née O'Bryan) Welch (December 14, 1914 – July 3, 2003), a stenographer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was a member of the Gros Ventre (A'aninin). Both also had Irish ancestry but had grown up within Native American cultures. As a child, Welch attended schools on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap reservations. Because Welch was raised in an American Indian setting, the traditions and religion, specifically from the Blackfoot history, were the sources of his writing.