Dubbed "the man made of words," N. Scott Momaday is a Native American poet, novelist, storyteller, and artist. "It is an identity that pleases me," the author wrote in the preface to In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961-1991. "In a sense, a real sense, my life has been composed of words. Reading and writing, talking, telling stories, listening, remembering, and thinking (someone has said that thinking is talking to oneself) have been the cornerstones of my existence. Words inform the element in which I live my daily life."

Considered one of the foremost writers of Native American literature, Momaday won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his first novel, House Made of Dawn. His work is heavily influenced by the legends, oral tradition, and spirituality of his Kiowa Indian background. "I would say that much of my writing has been concerned with the question of...