Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard is a master of narrative, which has brought her wide acclaim as an author, as well as in other genres of literature. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1945, Dillard has kept mostly to the New England area of the U.S. After her education at Hollins College (Roanoke, VA) and Western Washington University, Dillard's attachment to New England life drew her to her present home of Middletown, Connecticut, where she lives with her husband and daughter. 1974 marked the beginning of Dillard's career, with the publication of her first works, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the latter of which attained instant success. The very next year Dillard was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.

Since then, she has lived up to this considerable recognition, by exhibiting the full measure of her writing capabilities in numerous essays, memoirs, and literary criticism. Aside from non-fiction, Dillard is also a poet and writer of fiction. It is her narrative style, compared by many critics with Henry David Thoreau for its elegance and meditative observation, that has crowned Dillard's career with so much popularity. Apart from her the devotion of her readers, critics have made her the subject of several studies, and she is a recipient of many awards, grants, and honorary doctorates. Wesleyan College, located in Dillard's hometown of Middletown, currently boasts her as a professor and writer-in-residence, a position she has held since 1979.

Works by Annie Dillard:

Tickets for a Prayer Wheel
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
An American Childhood
The Living