Ernestine Hayes was born to the Wolf House, Tlingit Kaagwaantaan clan, in southeast Alaska at the end of World War II. In her first book, Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir-which received an American Book Award -- she weaves reminiscences of her life, stories from her grandmother, Tlingit history, nature writing, and fiction into a testament of the twentieth -century Alaska Native experience and a love song to the land. Her latest book, The Tao of Raven, places fiction and nonfiction narrative s in the context of Raven and the Box of Daylight and Sun Tzu's Art of War. Ernestine teaches writing at the University of Alaska Southeast campus and is our current Alaska Writer Laureate.