A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian who grew up on the reservation in Wellpinit, Wash., Sherman Alexie is best known for his 2003 short-story collection, Ten Little Indians. Or perhaps his young-adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Or maybe even his screenplay for the 1998 Audience Award-winning Sundance Film Festival movie Smoke Signals.

If all that’s not enough, Alexie has written a new collection of short stories, War Dances, that explores the vast and ever-expanding territory of men and their gigantic failures. It’s a bit different from many of his other endeavors in that it doesn’t overtly use his ethnic identity as a tool or backdrop for such explorations. Owner and operator of The King’s English Betsy Burton is proud to be hosting Alexie, stating, “He does more to show the chasm between Indian and Anglo with nine pages of narrative and a hospital blanket than most writers could do with a full-length novel.”

Sherman Alexie: War Dances @ The King’s English, 1511 S. 1500 East, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 7 p.m. KingsEnglish.com