Craig Lesley (born 1945) is a memoirist and novelist of the modern American west.
He has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize, first for his novel The Sky Fisherman in 1996, and again for Storm Riders in 2001.
His novel Winterkill was the first to win the Golden Spur award for Best Novel and Medicine Pipe Bearer's for Best First Novel from the Western Writers of America[1][2] He has been the recipient of several national fellowships and holds a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Whitman College.
[3] Prior to his life in academia, Lesley was a river guide, a longshoreman, and a farmworker, nearly losing his life at the age of 15 when his pelvis was crushed in an accident with a mint harvester.
[4] Lesley's working-class background informs his writing, and is an integral part of his re-interpretation of the myths of the American West.