Washington State Authors

Washington State Authors

This article relates to So Far Gone

Jess Walter, the author of So Far Gone, is based in Washington, a state that has produced a number of well-known writers. Below we feature a small selection of Washington State authors and books.

Many of Sherman Alexie's early works are set on the Spokane Reservation, where he grew up. His linked short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1992), is peopled by lovable rogues and drunks, among them Thomas Builds-the-Fire and James Many Horses. Basketball is popular on the reservation and serves as a link to Alexie's autobiographical young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), in which 14-year-old Arnold Spirit, Jr. transfers from the rez school to an elite majority-white high school. The basketball showdown between the two schools is symbolic of Junior's struggle to be accepted when he feels "half Indian in one place and half white in the other." Despite heavy themes of alcoholism, bullying, and poverty, the book is both hilarious and heartwarming.

Note: Alexie has been the subject of multiple allegations of sexual harassment, and some Native writers feel that his presence as a spokesperson for the Native literary community has been problematic. More information can be found here.

Science fiction author Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was from Pasadena, California but lived outside Seattle for the last seven years of her life. Among her best-known novels are Kindred (1979), a cross between historical fiction and time travel sci-fi in which an African American writer suddenly finds herself on a 19th-century Maryland plantation; and the prescient dystopian novel The Parable of the Sower (1993). Her last book, Fledgling (2005), subverts traditional horror tropes with its Black protagonist, who appears to be an 11-year-old girl with amnesia but is actually a 53-year-old vampire/alien hybrid.

Prolific fantasy author David Eddings (1931–2009) was born in Spokane and grew up in Snohomish, Washington. Two-time Washington State Book Award winner Timothy Egan lives in Seattle and writes biographies and history books. His subjects have included the Dust Bowl, the Ku Klux Klan, and the photographer Edward Curtis. Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (2009) was inspired by a real event: in 1986, belongings left behind by Japanese Americans forcibly relocated to internment camps during World War II were discovered at the Panama Hotel, which was once one of the main buildings of Seattle's Japantown. A found parasol embodies Chinese American Henry's friendship with Japanese American Keiko Okabe and sparks his quest into the past. Kitty Kelley, who was born and raised in Spokane, has written unauthorized biographies of well-known figures including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Nancy Reagan, and Oprah Winfrey. Lastly, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa is set during the 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protest in Seattle.

Filed under Reading Lists

This article relates to So Far Gone. It first ran in the June 18, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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