Essay by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
It’s a pleasure to revisit the subject of Native American crime fiction for The Strand. Back in 2020, I wrote “Seven Essential Native American Crime Novels” for this publication, where I reviewed the origin of Indigenous mystery and suspense fiction, as well as noting several influential works in the genre. My Native crime novel, Winter Counts (Ecco/HarperCollins) was released in August 2020, right at the first wave of the global pandemic. With every brick-and-mortar bookstore in America closed, it was easy to feel disheartened, given that I’d worked on the novel for years. Happily, readers rallied around the book, and it won a number of crime fiction and literary awards as well as becoming a national bestseller. Now, with the sequel Wisdom Corner (Ecco/HarperCollins) about to hit shelves, it’s appropriate to take stock of Indigenous crime fiction again.
In 2026, much has changed for Native artists, not only in mystery and suspense fiction, but also in other creative fields, including film and television, music, theatre, and visual art. There’s been a great deal of new work being produced, much of which has received wide exposure and acclaim. For example, the television series Reservation Dogs was the first to feature a completely Indigenous cast, crew, and writing staff. The series, which dealt with four teenagers on an Oklahoma reservation, aired from 2021 to 2023 and was nominated for an Emmy award. In 2022, Raven Chacon became the first Native American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music for his composition, Voiceless Mass. The PBS animated children’s show Molly of Denali featured the fictional Molly Mabray, an Alaska Native girl as the lead character. The show won a Peabody Award in 2020 and won an Outstanding Writing award at the Children’s and Family Emmy Awards in 2025.
But the expansion of Native American creativity has been especially evident in literature. Indeed, it’s been proposed that we are now witnessing a new Native American Renaissance of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The term was originally coined by the critic Kenneth Lincoln in his 1983 book, Native American Renaissance, which examined the influential work of N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, and others who wrote what’s generally known as literary fiction.
However, one of the hallmarks of the new Native American Literary Renaissance is the willingness of this generation of Indigenous authors to delve into genre fiction. In recent years, Native authors have published works of crime fiction, horror, speculative, romance, and young adult literature. The last decade has seen Indigenous writers being nominated for—and winning—the highest awards in each of the most prominent literary genres. Native authors have won the Edgar, Anthony, Thriller, Printz, Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, among others. These novels have not only won awards and garnered critical acclaim but have often been bestsellers as well. The broad scope of the work being produced by this new generation indicates that the boundaries and stereotypes too often imposed by the literary establishment are no more.
Since 2020, Indigenous-authored crime fiction is experiencing a major resurgence. Many Native authors are now publishing with the Big Five publishing houses, a recent and significant development. Other Indigenous writers are publishing with highly respected smaller houses, such as Soho Press. Here’s a brief survey of recently published Native crime novels.
Angeline Boulley’s young adult thriller, Firekeeper’s Daughter, published in 2021 by Henry Holt, was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Printz Award, and she’s published two more books in the series since then. Ramona Emerson’s paranormal crime thriller, Shutter, published by Soho Crime in 2023, was one of the first genre novels to be longlisted for the National Book Award. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns is a mystery and horror novel, published by Vintage in 2023. Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie, published by Berkley in 2024, is a fantastic mystery set on Cherokee territory. Nick Medina’s Sisters of the Lost Nation, published by Berkley in 2023, is another excellent paranormal crime novel set on reservation land. Finally, my own edited volume, Native Noir, forthcoming from Akashic Books, is the first anthology of crime and mystery short stories written by exclusively Native authors. The anthology features emerging and established writers from Indigenous lands in the United States and Canada, all committed to writing short stories in the noir tradition.
There are more books that could be added to this list, but the point is clear. By my rough count, there have been more Native-authored crime novels published in the last six years than in the last three decades combined. When I wrote my first article for The Strand, I noted seven Native crime novels with publication dates ranging from 1990 to 2019. Today, I could easily list at least two dozen published in the last six years. Furthermore, many of these recent works have won or been nominated for major genre awards, achieved bestseller status, and influenced the national dialogue on issues relevant to Indigenous peoples. By any definition, we are clearly in the middle of a Native American crime fiction renaissance.
Hopefully, this explosion of Native crime fiction will become the new normal, and many more Indigenous writers will expand the boundaries of the genre. For now, it is gratifying to see so many Native American authors embracing genre literature, telling great stories, and educating readers about Indigenous matters.
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