author
John G. Neihardt
1881–1973
Best known for Black Elk Speaks, this Nebraska poet and writer spent decades turning the history and legends of the American West into sweeping verse and prose.
5 Audiobooks
The Lonesome Trail
by John G. Neihardt
When the tree flowered : An authentic tale of the old Sioux world
by John G. Neihardt
Two Mothers
by John G. Neihardt
The Song of Hugh Glass
by John G. Neihardt
The River and I
by John G. Neihardt
About the author
Born in Illinois in 1881 and raised in Nebraska from childhood, he showed literary talent early and went on to become one of the state's best-known writers. In 1921 he was named Nebraska's poet laureate, a title closely tied to his long-standing reputation as a voice of the Great Plains.
His most famous book, Black Elk Speaks (1932), grew out of conversations with the Oglala Lakota holy man Black Elk and remains the work most readers know him for today. He also devoted many years to his epic poem sequence A Cycle of the West, along with novels, stories, and essays shaped by frontier history and the American West.
Neihardt died in 1973 in Columbia, Missouri. His work is remembered both for its ambition and for the lasting place it holds in discussions of Western literature, Nebraska culture, and the legacy of Black Elk Speaks.