Sherman Alexie - who won the National Book Award for YA literature with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - won the PEN/Faulkner prize for fiction for War Dances, his collection of short stories.
Alexie, who appeared at last fall's Miami Book Fair International, will receive $15,000.
A wise reviewer - OK, it was me - wrote this about War Dances when it was released last fall:
"The men in Sherman Alexie's terrific collection of stories and poems are frequently flummoxed … by life, women, history.
The father in The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless can't understand why his daughters are appalled by the music he generously loads into their new iPods (``But all these songs are your songs. . . . They're not mine''). The screenwriter in Fearful Symmetry doesn't know why his words desert him after the studio butchers his script. A spoiled gay basher unwittingly beats up an old friend in The Senator's Son. The young intern in Salt who writes obituaries is shocked to learn there are realities worse than death.
Author of 13 books of poetry, three story collections, four novels and the award-winning screenplay for Smoke Signals, the wily Alexie places his characters at crossroads, then sits back to see which way they'll turn. Paul Nonetheless reaches an unhappy point of no return; the senator's son discovers that his father's high principles are bendable. But the screenwriter finds redemption in crossword puzzles, and the intern learns why no one should live forever. Sometimes things work out. Sometimes they don't."
