With settings ranging from the Rocky Mountain Front to Alaska's coast, Puget Sound and Oregon, the Chicago Tribune noted in 1987 that Doig wrote of "immigrant families, dedicated schoolteachers, miners, fur trappers, town builders"[1] and of "the uncertainties of friendship and love, and colossal battles of will, set amid the vast unpredictabilities of a land noted for sudden deadly floods, agonizing droughts, blizzards and forest fires.

[3] This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind, Doig's 1977 memoir, was finalist for the National Book Award for Contemporary Thought.

He won the Western Literature Association's lifetime Distinguished Achievement award[2] and held the distinction of the only living author with works of both fiction and non-fiction listed in the top 12 of the San Francisco Chronicle poll of best books of the 20th century.

If I have any creed that I wish you as readers, necessary accomplices in this flirtatious ceremony of writing and reading, will take with you from my pages, it'd be this belief of mine that writers of caliber can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing of that larger country: life.Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana[5] to Charles "Charlie" Doig, ranch hand and Berneta Ringer Doig.

As a child, Doig read comics, sports pages and magazines like Life, Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post.

[4] The western landscape and people play an important role in Doig's fiction, with much of it set in the Montana country of his youth.

Ivan met his future wife, Carol Muller, at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University[13] while the two were students.

[14] In October 2015, Carol Doig donated her husband's extensive holding of notes, photos and records of his writing to the Montana State University Library Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections.

[19] This library includes a collaboration with Acoustic Atlas, Soundscapes of Ivan Doig, with recordings and interviews from the lands and peoples featured in his novels.