Sherman Alexie (Coeur d'Alene/Spokane) is a critically acclaimed filmmaker and writer, with 16 books published to date, including Indian Killer, a New York Times Notable Book, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction. Alexie's directorial feature debut, The Business of Fancydancing (2002), won numerous film festival awards. Previously, Alexie collaborated with Chris Eyre on the screenplay for Smoke Signals (1998), a feature film based on a short story from his book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. He was a nominee for the Independent Feature Project/West 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. After graduating from Washington State University he received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship in 1991 and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1992. Alexie's Dangerous Astronomy, a poetry chapbook, will be published in 2005.