Tommy Orange

Tommy Orange (born January 19, 1982) is an American novelist and writer from Oakland, California. His first book, There There (2018), was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and received the 2019 American Book Award. In October 2025, Orange was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Orange is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He earned a master's degree in fine arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts. He was born and raised in the Dimond District of Oakland, California, and resides there.

Orange was born in Oakland, California, on January 19, 1982. From age 14 to 24, Orange played roller hockey on a national level. He began playing music at the age of 18. Orange's father was a Native American ceremony leader, while his mother converted for a time to Christianity. After graduating from college with a Bachelor of Science degree in sound arts, Orange worked at Gray Wolf Books, a bookstore in San Leandro, where he developed a passion for reading and thus began writing.

Orange obtained a bachelor's degree in audio engineering and later a Master of Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). He now teaches at the IAIA in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In addition to his novels, Orange has published a profile of a Native American teen (17-year-old Jeffrey Martinez) for Esquire magazine in 2019, revealing what life is like for a Native American today. Orange has also published short stories in the literary magazines McSweeney’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Zyzzyva.

Orange participated in an episode of The Archive Project at the 2019 Sun Valley Writers' Conference. In the episode, he states that in many ways There There was for his dad and about his dad, whom he described as someone "very secure in their Indianness and doesn’t necessarily teach it to their kids".

Orange's second novel, Wandering Stars, was featured on the cover of the March 2024 issue of BookPage magazine. The cover story featured an article by Orange regarding the inspiration and process of completing the novel. He expressed significant concern that a follow-up novel to There There could be perceived as "lowbrow" before it was released. He wrote that a sequel felt "Like it belonged in the Marvel-Universe of decision-making, like people would think it was a cash grab even though I made the decision before the success of There There". He also stated that the title of the novel was inspired by the 1994 song "Wandering Star" by Portishead.

Orange has said that his inspiration for There There came in a single moment. At the time, he was working in a digital storytelling booth at the Native American Health Center and also at a nonprofit founded by the University of California, Berkeley, called Story Center. His roles were to record oral stories and to staple and make copies of grants, burning sage, and sending them off with a prayer. This work led him to realize that the stories of urban Natives needed to be heard, especially by other urban Natives so they would be able "to see their own stories reflected in a bigger way". Orange said that "Native people are pretty invisible" and he wanted to tell a story about a community that people knew too little about. He believes that hearing a story similar to one's own is powerful and helps people to feel that they exist, and belong to a real community. Orange has said that feeling out of place makes it harder to be a strong human being. It was his goal to expand the range of what it meant to be Native.