MARQUETTE — Author David Heska Wanbli Weiden will read from his celebrated debut novel, “Winter Counts,” and participate in a Q&A as part of a Northern Michigan University English Visiting Writers Series event at 7 p.m. Thursday in Peninsula 1 of the Northern Center.

The groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. It was also named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Amazon, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Guardian and other magazines.

Weiden is an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation. He received his master of fine arts degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts, his law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College, and his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin.

His non-fiction works are in The New York Times, Shenandoah and Writer’s Digest, and his short fiction appears in Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories 2022. He’s currently a professor of Native American Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver and serves on the faculty of the Cedar Crest Pan-European MFA program.