Biography of ann patchett
Ann Patchett
American novelist and memoirist (born )
Ann Patchett (born December 2, ) is an American author. She received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novelBel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (),Taft (),The Magician's Assistant (), Run (),State of Wonder (), Commonwealth (), The Dutch House (), and Tom Lake ().The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Biography
Ann Patchett was born on December 2, , in Los Angeles, California, to Frank Patchett (a Los Angeles police captain who arrested Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan) and Jeanne Ray (a nurse who later became a novelist). She is the younger of two daughters. Her mother and father divorced when she was young. Her mother remarried, and when Patchett was six years old the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee.
Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a private Catholic school for girls in Nashville, Tennessee run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College.
After college, she attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she lived with the memoirist and poet Lucy Grealy. Their time as roommates and their life-long friendship was the subject of her memoir Truth & Beauty.
In her early twenties Patchett married; however, the marriage lasted only about a year.
In her late twenties, Patchett won a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; during her time there, she wrote her first novel The Patron Saint of Liars, which was published in
In , she co-founded a bookstore with Karen Hayes, Parnassus Books, in Nashville, Tennessee, which opened in Novem ANN PATCHETT is the author of nine novels, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth,The Dutch House, andTom Lake. She was the editor of Best American Short Stories, , and has written four books of nonfiction–Truth & Beauty, about her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, What Now? an expansion of her graduation address at Sarah Lawrence College, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of essays examining the theme of commitment, and These Precious Days, essays on home, family, friendship, and writing. She has collaborated with illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser on three children’s books, Lambslide, Escape Goat, and The Verts. Most recently, she released an annotated version of one of her most beloved novels, Bel Canto. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Patchett has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a National Humanities Medal, England’s Women’s Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Book Sense Book of the Year, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the American Bookseller’s Association’s Most Engaging Author Award, and the Women’s National Book Association’s Award. Her novel, The Dutch House, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her books have been both New York Times Notable Books and New York Times bestsellers. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In November, , she opened Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, with her business partner Karen Hayes. She has since become a spokesperson for independent booksellers, championing books and bookstores on NPR, The Colbert Report (including the series finale), Oprah's Super Sou Born December 02, Website Genre Fiction, Historical Fiction Influences Elizabeth McCracken, Lucy GrealyElizabeth McCracken, Lucy Grealymore edit data WHITE HOUSE CITATION When the plots of Ann Patchett’s eight novels are summarized, they may seem, at first, to have nothing in common. In The Patron Saint of Liars, a woman with a secret arrives at a home for unwed mothers. In State of Wonder, a scientist sets off into the Brazilian rain forest to locate the body of her deceased colleague. In Commonwealth, a messy, blended family mourns the tragic loss of a child. For Patchett, however, the connection between her stories is simple: “A group of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society,” Patchett said in a recent telephone conversation. “That’s it.” This deceptively simple premise has allowed her to delve into the complexities of her characters’ inner lives and deliver what one reviewer described as “provocative insights that sum up entire relationships.” Her fiction has proven to be compelling to readers and critics alike. Patchett has received, among other honors, the Pen/Faulkner Award, United Kingdom’s Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which recognizes prose for the “quality of its style.” In addition to her novels, Patchett has published two children’s books and four works of nonfiction, including her most recent collection of essays, These Precious Days. Novels may take her far afield, she has observed, but her essays tend to come from her own life and are “made from the things that were at hand.” Born in , in Los Angeles, and raised in Nashville, Patchett describes herself as being a child who possessed a knack for “stillness” and being alone with her own thoughts, valuable skills fo Ann Patchett
Patchett was born in Los Angeles, California. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray.
She moved to Nashville, Tennessee when she was six, where she continues to live. Patchett said she loves her home in Nashville with her doctor husband and dog. If asked if she could go any place, that place would always be home. "Home is the stable window that opens out into the imagination."
Patchett attended high school at St. Bernard Academy, a private, non-parochial Catholic school for girls run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and took fiction writing classes with Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. She later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and the Fine Arts WoPatchett was born in Los Angeles, California. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray.
She moved to Nashville, Tennessee when she was six, where she continues to live. Patchett said she loves her home in Nashville with her doctor husband and dog. If asked if she could go any place, that place would always be home. "Home is the stable window that opens out into the imagination."
Patchett attended high school at St. Bernard Academy, a private, non-parochial Catholic school for girls run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and took fiction writing classes with Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. She later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she met longtime friend Elizabeth McCracken. It was also there that she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars.
In , when she found that her hometown of Nashville no longer had a good book store, she
Ann Patchett, for putting into words the beauty, pain, and complexity of human nature. With her best-selling novels and essays, and her bookstore, readers from around the world see themselves in the pages of Ann Patchett’s books that take people to places of the heart and feed the imagination of our Nation.