Win Blevins

Win Blevins was an award-winning author best known for his fiction and non-fiction books of Western lore and Native American leaders, lifestyle, and spirituality. He was the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Western Writers of America, and a member of the Western Writers Hall of Fame; a three-time winner of Wordcraft Circle Native Writers and Storytellers Book of the Year; two-time winner of a Spur Award for Best Novel of the West; and was nominated for a Pulitzer for his novel about Crazy Horse, Stone Song.

Blevins, whose own origins were a mix of Cherokee, Welsh-Irish, and African American, published his first novel in 1973. That book, Give Your Heart to the Hawks, a Tribute to the Mountain Man, is still in print fifty years later and recently returned to the New York Times bestseller list. 

Over his long career, Blevins wrote nearly forty books, including the historical fiction Rendezvous series, a dozen screenplays, and numerous magazine articles. His Dictionary of the American West is held in 750 libraries.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 21, 1938, Blevins was an honors graduate of Columbia University—where he earned a master’s degree—and the Music Conservatory of the University of Southern California. He began his writing career as a music and drama critic for the Los Angeles Times and became the principal entertainment editor for the The Los Angeles Herald Examiner. During that time, he hung out with the likes of Sam Peckinpah and Strother Martin, and began diving into the lives of Mountain Men and Native Americans of the West.

He also served as the Gaylord Family Visiting Professor of Professional Writing at the University of Oklahoma. For fifteen years, he was a book editor for Macmillan Publishing and TOR/Forge Books.

Win loved and felt a deep connection with nature. He climbed mountains on four continents and was a boatman-guide on the Snake River. Once caught in a freak blizzard while climbing, he took shelter inside a tree for more than twenty-four hours. His feet were frozen, but he refused to have them amputated. Almost twenty years after that event, he climbed the Himalayas—despite an awkward gait.

Native Spirituality suited him. He was pierced during a Lakota ceremony and was a pipe carrier. He went on twelve vision quests and felt the pull of the red road.

Win spent the last twenty years of his life, living quietly in the Southwest among the Navajo. His passions grew with time. In the center was his wife Meredith, their children, and many grandchildren. Classical music, baseball, roaming red rock mesas, and rafting were great loves, and he considered himself blessed to create new stories about the West. He was also proud to call himself a member of the world’s oldest profession—storytelling.