His autobiography So Far, So Good won the 2012 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize.
His book Light from a Bullet Hole: Poems New and Selected was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
[2] Ralph Salisbury was born in 1926 on a farm in Fayette County in northeast Iowa to an Irish American mother and a father who had English, Cherokee, and Shawnee heritage,[3] though he was not enrolled in any Native American nation.
[6] A year after graduating from Aurora (Iowa) High School at age 16, he enlisted in the Air Force and was trained as an aerial gunman, completing his training within days of the end of World War Two.
[8] Poesie Da Un Retaggio Cherokee, Multimedia Edizioni, Salerno, Italy 1995, Tr.