Marianne Wiggins

Marianne Wiggins (born November 8, 1947) is an American author. According to The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, Wiggins writes with "a bold intelligence and an ear for hidden comedy." She has won a Whiting Award, an National Endowment for the Arts award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.

Biography Wiggins was born on November 8, 1947, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She married Brian Porzak in 1965, with whom she had one daughter. The couple divorced in 1970.

Wiggins lived in London for 16 years, and for brief periods in Paris, Brussels, and Rome. In January 1988, she married novelist Salman Rushdie in London. On February 14, 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a Fatwa ordering Rushdie's assassination for alleged blasphemy in his book, The Satanic Verses. Although Wiggins had told Rushdie only five days prior that she wished to end their marriage, she nevertheless went into hiding along with him. In 1993, the two divorced.

Wiggins currently lives in Los Angeles, California, where she has been in the English department of the University of Southern California since 2005. |author=Marianne Wiggins, June 2006

Awards and honors 1989: Whiting Award 1989: Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for John Dollar 2003: Finalist for the National Book Award for Evidence of Things Unseen 2004: Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Evidence of Things Unseen