Linda LeGarde Grover is a member of the Bois Forte band of Ojibwe and associate professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth. The Road Back to Sweetgrass has been awarded the Native Writers Circle of the Americas First Book Award; Grover has also received the Flannery O'Conner Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, whose previous recipients include Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, and Toni Morrison.