David Heska Wanbli Weiden

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, is the author of the national bestseller Winter Counts (Ecco, 2020), which was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The novel is the winner of the Electa Quinney Award from the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures.

He teaches in the low-residency Pan-European MFA program at Cedar Crest College, and at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts, his law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a MacDowell Fellow, Ucross Fellow, Sewanee Fellow, Tin House Scholar, Ragdale Foundation resident, Vermont Studio Center Fellow, and received the 2018 PEN/America Writing for Justice Fellowship. He’s a national Board member for the Mystery Writers of America, active member of the International Thriller Writers, Western Writers of America, and member of the Dramatists Guild and Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers. He’s Professor of English and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Stony Brook University and lives in New York and Colorado with his family.

His last name, Weiden, is pronounced “Why-den.” Heska Wanbli is pronounced “Heh-ska Wahn-blee.” His nation, the Sicangu Lakota, is pronounced “See-chon-goo Lah-coat-ah.”