Annie Dillard

Infobox Writer


imagesize =
name = Annie Dillard
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pseudonym =
birthname =
birthdate = Birth date and age|1945|4|30|mf=y
birthplace = Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
deathdate =
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occupation = essayist, novelist, poet, literary critic
nationality = American
period = 1974—present
genre = nonfiction, fiction, nature, theology
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notableworks =
awards = nowrap|Pulitzer Prize general nonfiction
1975 - "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"
influences =Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson
influenced =


website = http://www.anniedillard.com/

Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, best known for her narrative nonfiction. She has also published poetry, essays, literary criticism, autobiography, and fiction. She is married to the historical biographer Robert D. Richardson, Jr. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE7D91F3EF932A25751C1A96E948260 Annie Dillard, Writer, Weds] ]

Life and career

Dillard describes her childhood at length in "An American Childhood". She is the oldest of three daughters, born to affluent parents who raised her in an environment that encouraged humor, creativity, and exploration. Her mother was a non-conformist and incredibly energetic. Her father taught her everything from plumbing to economics to the intricacies of the novel "On The Road". Dillard's childhood was filled with days of piano and dance classes, rock and bug collecting, and devouring the books on the shelves of the public library. But there were also many troubles--like the horrors of war, which she often read about.

After graduating from high school, Dillard attended Hollins College (Hollins University since 1998), in Roanoke, Virginia, where she studied literature and creative writing. She married her writing teacher, the poet R. H. W. Dillard (her maiden name is Doak)--the person she says "taught her everything she knows" about writing. In 1968 she graduated with a Masters in English, after writing a 40-page thesis on Thoreau's "Walden", which focused on the use of Walden Pond as "the central image and focal point for Thoreau's narrative movement between heaven and earth." The next couple of years after graduation Dillard spent painting and writing. During this time, she published several poems and short stories.

Dillard's family did not attend Presbyterian church but when she was a child she and her sister did.Fact|date=December 2007 She also spent a few summers at a fundamentalist summer camp.Fact|date=December 2007 During her rebellious teenage years, she quit church because of the "hypocrisy." When she told her minister, he gave her a stack of books by C. S. Lewis, which ended this rebellion. After her college years, Dillard became, as she says, "spiritually promiscuous," incorporating the ideas of many religious systems into her own religious understanding. Not only are there references to Christ and the Bible in her first prose book, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", but also to Judaism, Buddhism, Sufism, and even Eskimo spirituality. In the 1990s, Dillard converted to Roman Catholicism.

After a near-fatal bout of pneumonia in 1971, Dillard decided that she needed to experience life more fully and began work on "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." She spent four seasons living near Tinker Creek, a suburban area surrounded by forests, creeks, mountains, and myriad animal life. When she wasn't in the library, she spent her time outdoors, walking and camping. After living there for about a year, Dillard began to write about her experiences near the creek. She started by transposing notes from her twenty-plus-volume reading journal. It took her eight months to turn the notecards into the book. Towards the end of the eight months, she was so absorbed that she sometimes wrote for fifteen hours a day, cut off from society without interest in current events (like the Watergate scandal). The finished book brought her a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 at the age of twenty-nine. Her other books in this vein include "Holy the Firm", "Teaching a Stone to Talk", and "For the Time Being". She has also written a memoir about growing up in Pittsburgh, "An American Childhood," and two novels, "The Living," and 2007's "The Maytrees."

Dillard spent some time as a faculty member in the English department at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut.

Major Works

* 1974 "Tickets for a Prayer Wheel" ISBN 0-8195-6536-9
* 1974 "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" ISBN 0-06-095302-0
* 1977 "Holy The Firm" ISBN 0-06-091543-9
* 1982 "Living By Fiction" ISBN 0-06-091544-7
* 1982 "Teaching a Stone To Talk" ISBN 0-06-091541-2
* 1984 "Encounters with Chinese Writers" ISBN 0-8195-6156-8
* 1987 "An American Childhood" ISBN 0-06-091518-8
* 1989 "The Writing Life" ISBN 0-06-091988-4
* 1992 "The Living" ISBN 0-06-092411-X
* 1995 "Mornings Like This: Found Poems" ISBN 0-06-092725-9
* 1999 "For the Time Being" ISBN 0-375-40380-9
* 2007 "The Maytrees" ISBN 0-06-123953-4

Further reading

*cite book |last=Johnson |first=Sandra Humble |title=The Space Between: Literary Epiphany in the Work of Annie Dillard |year=1992 |publisher=Kent State University Press |location=Kent, Ohio |isbn=9780873384469 |oclc=23254581

*cite book |last=Parrish |first=Nancy C. |title=Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers |year=1998 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |location=Baton Rouge, LA |isbn=9780807122433 |oclc=37884725

*cite book |last=Smith |first=Linda L. |title=Annie Dillard |year=1991 |publisher=Twayne Publishers |location=New York, NY |isbn=0805776370 |oclc=23583395

References

External links

* [http://www.anniedillard.com The Secrets of the Universe as Decoded by the Unhinged] (official Annie Dillard website)
* [http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/28/specials/dillard.html New York Times Featured Author: Dillard Articles]
* [http://anniedillard.blogspot.com The Annie Dillard Log (comprehensive bibliography; extensive list of links, blurbs, and public appearances)]
* [http://www.crosscurrents.org/dillard.htm The Ecotheology of Annie Dillard: A Study in Ambivalence] (critical article)
* [http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxii/10.4.96/ae/dillard.html Ideas are tough; irony is easy] (interview)
* [http://www.towerofbabel.com/splashingheart/teteatete/anniedillard Tete a tete: Lunch with Annie Dillard] (interview)
* [http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/28/specials/dillard-pilgrim.html "New York Times:" April 26, 1992: A Pilgrim's Progress]
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4270641 NPR: Tsunami Commentary: Dots In Blue Water] (Audio)
* [http://www.chfestival.org/pastFestivals/speakerDtl.cfm?sid=14 A Writer's Writer on Her Work (Audio)]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/21/AR2007062101900_pf.html "Washington Post": In Conversation With Annie Dillard]
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10532320 NPR: Excerpt: "The Maytrees", read by Annie Dillard]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/books/25gree.html?ex=1183867200&en=73957c21d752b9b2&ei=5070 "New York Times" review of "The Maytrees"]
* [http://www.slate.com/id/2169336/ "Slate" review of The Maytrees]
* [http://openlettersmonthly.com/issue/death-by-landscape/"Open Letters" review of 'The Maytrees"]

Persondata
NAME= Dillard, Annie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= American writer
DATE OF BIRTH= 30 April, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH= Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=