SOURCE: An interview with Leslie Marmon Silko, in Speaking of the Short Story, edited by Farhat Iftekharuddin, Mary Rohrberger, and Maurice Lee, University Press of Mississippi, 1997, pp. 237-47.

In the following interview, Silko discusses her perceptions of herself as a writer, the role of oral tradition, women and men's roles in Laguna Society, and the nature of Native American political reform.

Leslie Marmon Silko is noted for her haunting stories based on Laguna folktales, Storyteller (1981), and for the compassion and epic vision of her novels, Ceremony (1977) and Almanac of the Dead (1991). A MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Leslie Silko has also published Laguna Woman (1974), a book of poetry, Sacred Water: Narratives and Pictures (1993), and many individual stories and poems. However, Silko, a distinguished contemporary writer, is most well known for her compassionate novel, Ceremony (1977). It was the generous reception of this book that launched Silko headlong into fame, as well...