James Welch is the author of the novels Winter in the Blood, Fools Crow, for which he received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an American Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, The Indian Lawyer, The Death of Jim Lonely, and most recently, Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians. He attended schools on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap reservations in Montana, and he graduated from the University of Montana, where he studied writing with the late Richard Hugo. Until recently, he served on the Montana State Board of Pardons. He lived in Missoula with his wife, Lois.

Welch died in 2003