Author dies of 'self-inflicted' wound

Louis Owens, a prize-winning novelist and leading scholar on American Indian fiction, has died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, hospital officials said. He was 53.

Owens, author of The Bone Game, Dark River and other novels, suffered a gunshot wound to the chest at the Albuquerque airport early on Wednesday and was brought to the University of New Mexico Hospital, airport spokeswoman Maggie Santiago said.