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.[1]
Life and career
Dillard's memoir An American Childhood described her youth in loving detail. 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. Her days were filled with piano and dance classes, rock and bug collecting, and reading books from the public library. But she was not shielded from the dark side of history and human nature, such as the horrors of war in the 20th century, 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, the person who, she says, "taught her everything she knows" about writing. In 1968 she graduated with an MA in English, after writing a thesis on Thoreau's Walden, which focused on Walden Pond as "the central image and focal point for Thoreau's narrative movement between heaven and earth." Dillard spent the first few years after graduation painting and writing, publishing several poems and short stories.
Dillard and a sister opted to attend a church, the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, which her parents did not attend.[citation needed] She also spent a few summers at the Ligonier Camp, in Ligonier, Pennsylvania.[citation needed] During her rebellious teenage years, she quit church because of the "hypocrisy." When she told her minister of her decision, he gave her a stack of books by C. S. Lewis, which eventually put an end to her 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, when she was a mere 29. 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 The Maytrees.
Dillard taught for a time in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut.
Major Works
Further reading
- Johnson, Sandra Humble (1992). The Space Between: Literary Epiphany in the Work of Annie Dillard. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. ISBN 9780873384469. OCLC 23254581.
- Parrish, Nancy C. (1998). Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 9780807122433. OCLC 37884725.
References
External links
