Anne Tyler facts for kids

Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941) is a famous American writer. She writes novels, short stories, and book reviews. She has written 24 novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). These three books were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989.

Anne Tyler has also won other important awards for her writing. In 2012, she received The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Her novel A Spool of Blue Thread was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Redhead By the Side of the Road was also nominated for the same award in 2020.

People know Anne Tyler for her amazing characters. Her stories have "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail." Her writing style is "rigorous and artful," and her language is "astute and open."

Anne Tyler's Early Life and School

Growing Up in a Quaker Community

Anne Tyler was the oldest of four children. She was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her parents were Quakers, a religious group known for their peaceful beliefs. They were very involved in helping others. In 1948, when Anne was seven, her family moved to a Quaker community in Celo, North Carolina. This community was in the mountains.

In Celo, Anne lived a unique childhood. She helped her parents with farm animals and organic gardening. She did not go to a regular public school. Instead, she learned art, carpentry, and cooking at home. She also studied other subjects in a small schoolhouse. She even took lessons by mail.

Discovering a Love for Stories

Anne Tyler remembers making up stories from a very young age. At three, she would tell herself stories to fall asleep. When she was seven, she made a book of drawings and stories. It was about "lucky girls" who traveled west in covered wagons.

Her favorite book as a child was The Little House. She read it many times because there weren't many books available. This book taught her that "years flowed by, people altered, and nothing could ever stay the same." This idea of change over time appears in many of her later novels.

When Anne was eleven, her family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. She had never been to public school or used a telephone before. This different upbringing helped her see the "normal world with a certain amount of distance and surprise."

School and Becoming a Writer

Anne felt like an outsider when she started public school in Raleigh. This feeling stayed with her most of her life. She believes this sense of being different helped her become a writer. She said that coming from the commune and trying to fit in made her want to write.

Even though she hadn't been to public school, Anne was ahead of her classmates. She loved having access to libraries. There, she discovered writers like Eudora Welty and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Eudora Welty became her favorite writer. Tyler said Welty showed her that books could be about everyday life, not just big events.

At Needham B. Broughton High School, her English teacher, Phyllis Peacock, encouraged her. Years later, Anne dedicated her first published novel to "Mrs. Peacock, for everything you've done."

College Years

When Anne graduated high school at sixteen, she wanted to go to Swarthmore College. But she won a scholarship to Duke University. Her parents wanted her to go to Duke to save money for her brothers' education.

At Duke, Anne took a creative writing class with Reynolds Price. He was very impressed with her writing, even at sixteen. He later called her "one of the best novelists alive in the world." Anne also studied Russian Literature and graduated at nineteen. She then went to Columbia University for graduate school in Slavic Studies.

Living in New York City was new for her. She loved riding trains and subways. She felt like "an enormous eye taking things in." She realized writing was the only way to express her observations. She left Columbia after a year and returned to Duke. There, she met Taghi Mohammad Modarressi, a writer and doctor. They married in 1963.

Anne Tyler's Writing Career

Early Books and Short Stories

While at Duke, Anne Tyler published her first short story, "Laura." She won an award for it. She wrote many short stories before she got married. One story, "The Saints in Caesar's Household," impressed her teacher, Reynolds Price. He sent it to a literary agent, Diarmuid Russell, who later became Tyler's agent.

Anne continued writing short stories and her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, while working at the Duke library. Her stories appeared in famous magazines like The New Yorker. Her first novel was published in 1964, and The Tin Can Tree came out the next year. Years later, she said she didn't like these early novels and wished she could "burn them." She felt they didn't have strong enough characters.

Family Life and Baltimore

In 1965, Anne had her first daughter, Tezh. Two years later, her second daughter, Mitra, was born. Her husband finished his medical training, and they moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Anne settled in Baltimore and has lived there ever since. Most of her later novels are set in this city.

With two young children, Anne had less time for writing. She didn't publish any books between 1965 and 1970. During this time, she started writing book reviews for newspapers to earn extra money. She wrote about 250 reviews in total. Even though she wasn't writing novels, she felt this time helped her grow. It gave her "more of a self to speak from" in her later writing.

Gaining National Attention

Anne Tyler started writing novels again in 1970. By 1974, she had published three more: A Slipping-Down Life, The Clock Winder, and Celestial Navigation. She felt her writing got much better during this time. With her children in school, she could focus more on her work.

With Celestial Navigation, she started to get national recognition. Another writer, Gail Godwin, gave it a very good review in The New York Times. Anne considers this novel one of her favorites. It was hard to write, she said, because she had to rewrite it many times to truly understand her characters.

The famous writer John Updike praised her next novel, Searching for Caleb. He wrote, "Funny and lyric and true, exquisite in its details... This writer is not merely good, she is wickedly good." He then reviewed her next four novels. Morgan's Passing (1980) won an award and was nominated for others.

Major Awards and Recognition

Anne Tyler became a truly recognized author with her ninth novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. She thinks this is her best work. It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. John Updike wrote that she had reached "a new level of power" with this book.

Her tenth novel, The Accidental Tourist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1985. It was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. This book was made into a movie in 1988, starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. The movie's success made more people aware of her writing.

Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989. Time magazine called it their "Book of the Year." This book was also made into a TV movie in 1994. Four other of her novels were later adapted for TV.

Since winning the Pulitzer Prize, Anne Tyler has written 13 more novels. Many of them have become New York Times Bestsellers. Ladder of Years was named one of the ten best books of 1995 by Time magazine. In her 2006 novel Digging to America, she explored how an immigrant feels like an "outsider." This was a topic she knew well because her husband was from Iran.

Besides novels, Tyler has published short stories in many magazines. These include The New Yorker and Harper's. She has also edited three collections of short stories.

Anne Tyler's Personal Life

In 1963, Anne Tyler married Taghi Mohammad Modarressi. He was a doctor and a novelist from Iran. He had left Iran as a political refugee. He had already written two award-winning novels in Persian. Anne helped him translate two of his later novels into English. Taghi Modarressi passed away in 1997.

Anne and Taghi had two daughters, Tezh and Mitra. Both daughters are artists, like their mother. Tezh is a photographer and painter. She painted the cover for her mother's novel, Ladder of Years. Mitra is an illustrator who works with watercolors. She has illustrated seven books, including two children's books she wrote with her mother.

Anne Tyler lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where most of her novels are set. Tourists can even take an "Anne Tyler tour" of the area. For a long time, she rarely gave interviews or went on book tours. But in 2012, she gave her first face-to-face interview in almost 40 years. She has since done a few more interviews to talk about her books.

Anne Tyler's Writing Style

How Her Books Are Classified

Some people call Anne Tyler a "Southern author" because she grew up in the South. She also admired Southern writers like Eudora Welty. However, it's hard to put her books into one category. Poet Katha Pollitt said her novels are "Southern in their sure sense of family and place." But they don't have the violence often found in Southern literature.

Tyler herself says she doesn't think about "themes" when she writes. She is "just trying to tell a story." She says any big life questions in her novels happen by accident. They come from her characters' experiences, not her own.

Amazing Characters and Details

In Anne Tyler's books, the characters are the most important part. She spends a lot of time getting to know them. She writes down "every imaginable facet of my characters before I begin a book." She wants to know how they will react in any situation. She says she writes to "live lives other than my own."

Critics praise her ability to choose small details that show how her characters think and feel. Each character feels real and has a deep inner life. They fit into the family story like pieces of a puzzle. Tyler says, "As far as I'm concerned, character is everything." She loves how her characters can surprise her.

Realism in Her Stories

Anne Tyler's writing style is so smooth that it pulls readers into the story. Writer Cathleen Schine said her "style without a style" makes the reader feel secure. It makes the story feel "real and natural." The San Francisco Chronicle said that reading a Tyler novel is like "visiting it."

Joyce Carol Oates explained that when a realistic novel works its magic, you don't just read about characters. You feel like you have lived their experiences. It's like having the magical power to relive parts of your own life.

Focus on Family and Marriage

Many reviewers notice that family and marriage are very important in Tyler's novels. Her stories often show the American family. Critic Michiko Kakutani says Tyler's characters try to understand themselves through their families. They want to know how much they are shaped by their family and how much they are their own person.

Tyler's families are often unique. They are pulled together by a strong feeling of duty, love, and old-fashioned guilt. Her novels often start with a loss or something missing. This makes the family remember who they are. Characters often return home, as if their parents had put tiny magnets in them. They feel a need to be with their familiar brothers and sisters.

Novelist Julia Glass says each story shows how characters rebel against family limits. They cope with big problems or form new relationships that change their world. Tyler is also great at showing the struggles in marriage. She shows the many ways two people keep a life together.

Time Passing and Small Events

The idea of time passing is always present in Tyler's novels. Her stories often cover many years, sometimes through flashbacks. Joyce Carol Oates noted that time itself becomes the "plot." Meaning is shown through memories and important moments. Small details in family life can become very meaningful.

Tyler herself says, "As for huge events vs. small events: I believe they all count." She finds it fascinating that small details can be so important. She loves to think about how one small thing, like "one pebble in a shoe," can change everything. She believes the real heroes in her books are those who manage to keep going.

How Anne Tyler Works

Anne Tyler is very disciplined about her writing schedule. She starts work early in the morning and usually works until 2 p.m. She has a small, neat room in her house in Baltimore where she writes. The only sounds she hears are "children playing outside and birds."

She says that starting work each day can be hard. She begins by looking at what she wrote the day before. Then she sits and stares into space, which she calls "an extension of daydreaming." This helps her focus on her characters.

Over the years, Tyler has kept notes on cards. Ideas, descriptions, and scenes often come from these notes. She says writing is a "very mechanical process" for her. She writes by hand first, then revises it. Then she types the whole story. She even reads her work into a tape recorder to hear if anything sounds wrong. She is very organized. She even draws floor plans of houses and timelines for her characters in a novel.

In 2013, Anne Tyler gave advice to new writers. She told them to read books by Erving Goffman, a sociologist. He studied how small actions reveal a lot about people. Tyler said, "Aren't human beings intriguing? I could go on writing about them forever."

Awards and Honors

Anne Tyler has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1983.

For Morgan's Passing (1980):

• Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction
• Nominated, American Book Award for Fiction
• Nominated, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

For Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982):

• Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
• Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Award
• Finalist, American Book Award for Fiction

For The Accidental Tourist (1985):

• 1985 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
• 1986 Ambassador Book Award for Fiction
• Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

For Breathing Lessons (1988):

• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1989)
• Time's "Book of the Year"

For Ladder of Years (1995):

• Finalist, The Orange Prize for Fiction 1996

For Digging to America (2006):

• Finalist, The Orange Prize for Fiction 2007

For A Spool of Blue Thread (2015):

• Finalist, The Man Booker Prize 2015
• Finalist, The Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015

For Redhead By the Side of the Road (2020):

• Longlist, The Man Booker Prize 2020

For Lifetime achievement:

• Finalist, The Man Booker International Prize 2011
• The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence 2012

See also

In Spanish: Anne Tyler para niños