Annie Dillard

Early life Dillard was born April 30, 1945, in Pittsburgh

Early childhood details can be drawn from Annie Dillard's autobiography, An American Childhood (1987), about growing up in the 1950s Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh in "a house full of comedians." The book focuses on "waking up" from a self-absorbed childhood and becoming immersed in the present moment of the larger world. She describes her mother as an energetic non-conformist. Her father taught her many useful subjects such as plumbing, economics, and the intricacies of the novel On the Road, though by the end of her adolescence she began to realize neither of her parents were infallible.

In her autobiography, Dillard describes reading a wide variety of subjects including geology, natural history, entomology, epidemiology, and poetry, among others. Among the influential books from her youth were The Natural Way to Draw and Field Book of Ponds and Streams As an adolescent, she stopped attending church, citing "hypocrisy." When she told her minister of her decision, she was given four volumes of C. S. Lewis's broadcast talks, from which she appreciated that author's philosophy on suffering, but elsewhere found the topic inadequately addressed. Dillard stated, "In college I learned how to learn from other people. As far as I was concerned, writing in college didn't consist of what little Annie had to say, but what Wallace Stevens had to say. I didn't come to college to think my own thoughts, I came to learn what had been thought." She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967 and a Master of Arts degree in 1968.

Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974)

In her first book of poems, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974), Dillard first articulated themes that she would later explore in other works of prose.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)

Dillard's journals served as a source for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), a nonfiction narrative about the natural world near her home in Roanoke, Virginia. Although the book contains named chapters, it is not (as some critics assumed) a collection of essays.

The book won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Dillard was 28, making her the youngest woman to have won the award. The Boston Globe called it "a kind of spiritual Strunk & White, a small and brilliant guidebook to the landscape of a writer's task." The Chicago Tribune wrote that, "For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague." The Detroit News called it "a spare volume...that has the power and force of a detonating bomb."

The Living (1992)

Dillard's first novel, The Living (1992), centers on the first European settlers of the Pacific Northwest coast. While writing the book, she never allowed herself to read works that postdated the year she was writing about, nor did she use anachronistic words.

Teaching In 1975, Dillard moved to the Pacific Northwest and taught for four years at Fairhaven College and Western Washington University. In 1980, she began teaching in the English department of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where she remained until she retired Professor Emerita in 2002.

To celebrate its city's centennial in 1984, the Boston Symphony commissioned Sir Michael Tippett to compose a symphony. He based part of its text on Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

In 1997, Dillard was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame for Writing and Journalism.

In 2005, artist Jenny Holzer used An American Childhood, along with three other books, in her light-based 'scrolling' artwork "For Pittsburgh," installed at the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh.

The New York Times named Maytrees among the top ten books published in 2007.

Personal life

Relationships

In 1965, at age 20, Dillard married her creative writing professor, Richard Dillard. Dillard and Clevidence remained married until 1988. They were married until Richardson's death in 2020.

Religion After college Dillard says she became "spiritually promiscuous." Her first prose book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, makes references not only to Christ and the Bible, but also to Islam, and Judaism, Buddhism, and Inuit spirituality. Dillard for a while converted to Roman Catholicism around 1988. This was described in detail in a New York Times overview of her work in 1992. In her 1999 book, For the Time Being, she describes her abandonment of Christianity, describing the supposed absurdity of some Christian doctrines, while stating she still stays near Christianity, and continuing to valorize Catholic writer Teilhard de Chardin. Her personal website lists her religion as "none."

Major works

1974 Tickets for a Prayer Wheel 1974 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 1977 Holy The Firm 1982 Living By Fiction 1982 Teaching a Stone To Talk 1984 Encounters with Chinese Writers 1987 An American Childhood 1989 The Writing Life 1992 The Living 1995 Mornings Like This: Found Poems 1999 For the Time Being 2007 The Maytrees 2016 The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old & New