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Biography
Canadian/American

Thomas King

1943

Thomas King is a Cherokee-Greek-German novelist, short-story writer, and broadcaster who is one of the most important Indigenous writers in North America. His novels — particularly Green Grass, Running Water (1993) and Truth and Bright Water (1999) — combine trickster humor, mythological reimagining, and sharp political commentary. His Massey Lectures, published as The Inconvenient Indian (2012), are a landmark work of Indigenous non-fiction.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityCanadian/American
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Thomas King (b. 24 April 1943) was born in Sacramento, California, of Cherokee, Greek, and German descent. He moved to Canada in the 1980s and is now a Canadian citizen. He taught at the University of Lethbridge and the University of Guelph and is a member of the Order of Canada.

Life and Career

Medicine River (1990) — about a photographer who returns to his hometown near a Blackfoot reserve in Alberta — established King’s characteristic mode: warm, comic, community-centred fiction that addresses serious issues (colonialism, identity, displacement) through humour and irony rather than anger.

Green Grass, Running Water (1993) — in which four elderly Indians escape from a mental institution and set out to fix the world, while mythological trickster figures reimagine the Book of Genesis, Moby-Dick, and John Wayne westerns — is his masterpiece: an extraordinarily inventive novel that is simultaneously hilarious and devastating.

The Inconvenient Indian (2012) — his Massey Lectures — is a wide-ranging, personal, and often very funny account of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in North America.

Major Works and Themes

King writes about Indigenous experience with humour, intelligence, and a refusal of the tragic mode that dominates non-Indigenous writing about Native peoples. His fiction draws on trickster traditions, oral storytelling, and a postmodern willingness to play with narrative form.

Key Works

  • Green Grass, Running Water (1993)
  • Truth and Bright Water (1999)
  • The Inconvenient Indian (2012)

Collecting King

Medicine River (1990, Viking Canada) — the debut — brings $30–$80. Green Grass, Running Water (1993, HarperCollins Canada) brings $20–$60. King signs at Canadian literary events.