Interviews with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris

Abstract Dorris: Louise had two stories that were independent stories, “Scales” and “The Red Convertible.” They were published independently and then there was a contest for the Nelson Algren Award for which they solicited stories of some five thousand or so words. We got the announcement that it was due by the fifteenth of January, and this was the first of January, and we just got back from vacation, and so we started talking about it and out of that grew “The World’s Greatest Fisherman,” the opening story of the novel Love Medicine, and we sent it off and thought of all the things that were wrong with it and what we would revise when it came back, and lo and behold, it won that contest. There were thousands of entries. We said, if it’s that good maybe we ought to think about expanding this and telling that same story because there are many stories in that story, from other points of view. And that expanded to developing the characters of Nectar and Marie and Lulu and on and on.