Bojan Louis is a member of the Navajo Nation – Diné of the Naakai Dine’é, born for the Áshííhí. He is the author of a book of poetry, Currents, which received an American Book Award, and the nonfiction chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona. His fiction has appeared in Ecotone, Numéro Cinq Magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review; and his nonfiction work in Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. Set in and around Flagstaff, the stories in the gritty Sinking Bells: Stories (Graywolf Press) depict violent collisions of love, cultures, and racism. An ex-con hired to fix a school bus for a couple living off the grid finds himself in the middle of their tattered relationship. An electrician plans to take his young nephew on a mountain hike, but plans go awry thanks to an untrustworthy new co-worker. A night custodian makes the mistake of revealing too much about his work at a medical research facility. A relapsing addict struggles to square his desire for a white woman he meets in a writing class with family expectations and traditions. In these stories, characters strain to temper predatory or self-destructive impulses and endeavor to end cycles of abuse and remake themselves anew.
