Louis Owens - Louis Owens, Choctaw/Cherokee Scholar & Novelist

Louis Owens, Choctaw/Cherokee Scholar & Novelist

Louis Owens was born in Lompoc, CA on July 18, 1948. He grew up in rural Mississippi and California and worked as a forest ranger and firefighter for the United States Forest Service. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his Ph.D. in 1981 from the University of California, Davis. Owens taught at the University of California, Davis and at University of California, Santa Cruz, California State University at Northridge, and the University of New Mexico. He was Professor of English and Native American Studies and Director of Creative Writing at the University of California, Davis at the time of his death in July, 2002.

Owens was a member of the editorial board of the Steinbeck Quarterly. He had been on the editorial board of New America, associate editor of American Literary Realism, and co-editor of American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 1990. He had also been a member of the national committee for the Native American Literature Award and the Native American Prose Award, a member of the governing board of the Native American International Prize in Literature and a nominator for the National Medal of Arts. He had also been a member of the Advisory Board of the Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute.

He contributed more than a hundred articles and reviews to periodicals, including Northeast Indian Quarterly, Arizona Quarterly, San Jose Studies, American Indian Quarterly, and USA Today.