Anne Tyler facts for kids

Anne Tyler, born on October 25, 1941, is a famous American writer. She writes novels, short stories, and also reviews books. She has written 25 novels, and many of them are very popular.

Some of her most well-known books include Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three of these books were nominated for the important Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Breathing Lessons actually won the prize in 1989!

Anne Tyler has also won other big awards. These include the National Book Critics Circle Award and The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Her novel A Spool of Blue Thread was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her book Redhead By the Side of the Road was also nominated for the same award in 2020. People love her books because her characters feel very real. Her writing style is also known for being very detailed and clear.

Anne Tyler's Early Life and School

Growing Up in Unique Communities

Anne Tyler was the oldest of four children. She was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her parents, Lloyd and Phyllis Tyler, were Quakers. Quakers are a religious group known for their peaceful beliefs and social work. Her family often moved to different Quaker communities in the South.

In 1948, when Anne was seven, her family settled in a Quaker community called Celo. This was in the mountains of North Carolina. The Celo Community was home to many people who chose not to fight in wars. Anne lived there until she was eleven years old. She helped her parents with farm work, like caring for animals and growing food.

She did not go to a regular public school in Celo. Instead, she learned art, carpentry, and cooking at home. Other subjects were taught in a small schoolhouse. She also learned through lessons sent by mail.

Discovering a Love for Stories

Anne Tyler remembers making up stories to help herself fall asleep when she was only three. When she was seven, she created her first "book." It was a collection of drawings and stories about 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. For example, The Little House is even mentioned in her novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. She also read Little Women 22 times!

When Anne was eleven, her family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. She had never been to public school or used a telephone before. This unusual childhood 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 for much of her life. She believes this sense of being different helped her become a writer. She said it was like "emerging from the commune... and trying to fit into the outside world."

Even though she hadn't been to public school before, 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 a huge influence on her. Anne learned from Welty that books could be about the small, everyday details of life.

In high school, her English teacher, Phyllis Peacock, encouraged her writing. Anne later dedicated her first published novel to Mrs. Peacock.

College Years

Anne Tyler graduated from high school at age sixteen. She wanted to go to Swarthmore College, a Quaker school. However, she won a scholarship to Duke University. Her parents encouraged her to go to Duke to save money for her younger brothers' education.

At Duke, Anne took her first creative writing class with Reynolds Price. He was very impressed with her, calling her "frighteningly mature for 16." Price later said she was "one of the best novelists alive in the world." Anne also studied Russian Literature and graduated in 1961 at age nineteen.

After Duke, she went to Columbia University for graduate school. Living in New York City was a big change. She loved riding trains and subways, feeling like "an enormous eye taking things in." She realized writing was the best way to express her observations. She left Columbia after a year and returned to Duke. There, she worked in the library and met Taghi Mohammad Modarressi. They got married seven months later in 1963.

Anne Tyler's Writing Career

First Books and Early Stories

While at Duke, Anne Tyler published her first short story, "Laura," in the university's literary journal. She won an award for it. Another story, "The Saints in Caesar's Household," also won an award. This story led her to meet Diarmuid Russell, who became her literary agent. He also represented her favorite writer, Eudora Welty.

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

Family Life and New Novels

In 1965, Anne had her first daughter, Tezh. Two years later, her second daughter, Mitra, was born. Around this time, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Anne has lived there ever since, and most of her later novels are set in Baltimore.

With two young children and moving, Anne didn't publish any books between 1965 and 1970. She started writing book reviews to earn extra money. She wrote about 250 reviews until the late 1980s. Even though she wasn't writing novels during this time, she felt it helped her grow as a person. This experience later gave her writing more depth.

Anne 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.

Her novel Celestial Navigation started to get national attention. Another writer, Gail Godwin, gave it a great review in The New York Times. Anne considers this book one of her favorites. It was hard to write, requiring many rewrites to truly understand the characters.

Becoming a Recognized Author

With her next novel, Searching for Caleb, Anne Tyler became even more recognized. The famous writer John Updike reviewed it, saying, "This writer is not merely good, she is wickedly good." He continued to review her next four novels.

Her novel Morgan's Passing (1980) won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. It was also nominated for other awards.

Anne Tyler truly became a major literary artist with her ninth novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. She considers this her best work. It was a finalist 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 a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986. This book was even made into a movie in 1988, starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. The movie's success made her work even more popular.

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 have also been 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. Her 2006 novel, Digging to America, explored how an immigrant deals with feeling like an "outsider." This was a topic Anne understood well because her husband was an immigrant from Iran.

Besides novels, Anne Tyler has published short stories in magazines like The New Yorker and Harper's. She also edited three collections of short stories between 1983 and 1996.

Anne Tyler's Personal Life

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

In the 1980s, Taghi founded centers in Baltimore to help children who had experienced emotional trauma. He passed away in 1997 at age 65 from lymphoma.

Anne and Taghi had two daughters, Tezh and Mitra. Both daughters are talented artists, like their mother. Tezh is a professional photographer and painter. She even painted the cover of 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. These are Tumble Tower and Timothy Tugbottom Says No!.

Anne Tyler still lives in the Roland Park neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Most of her novels are set in this area. Tourists can even take an "Anne Tyler tour" of the neighborhood!

For many years, Anne Tyler rarely gave interviews or went on book tours. She preferred to stay private. However, in 2012, she gave her first face-to-face interview in almost 40 years. She has since done a few more interviews, discussing her writing process.

How Anne Tyler Writes

Her Characters and Details

Anne Tyler's stories are driven by her characters. She spends a lot of time getting to know them before she starts writing. She writes down everything she can imagine about them. She wants to understand how they would 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 exactly how her characters think and feel. These details make her characters seem very real. Anne Tyler says, "As far as I'm concerned, character is everything. I never did see why I have to throw in a plot, too." She also makes sure to write about characters she likes. If she finds a character she doesn't really like, she usually removes them from the story.

Her Writing Process

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

She often starts her day by reviewing what she wrote the day before. Then, she stares into space for a while. She calls this part of writing an "extension of daydreaming." It helps her focus on her characters.

Over the years, Anne Tyler has kept many note cards with ideas and observations. Characters and scenes often come from these notes. She describes her writing process as very mechanical. She writes first by hand, then revises, then types the whole story. She even reads her work into a tape recorder to listen for anything that doesn't sound right. She is very organized, sometimes even drawing floor plans of houses in her novels.

In 2013, Anne Tyler gave advice to new writers. She told them to study how people act without thinking, because these small actions can reveal a lot about them. She finds human beings very interesting and says she could write about them forever.

Awards and Recognition

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

Here are some of her major awards and nominations:

• For Morgan's Passing (1980):
  • Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction
  • Nominated for the American Book Award for Fiction
  • Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
• For Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982):
  • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award
  • Finalist for the 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 for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
• For Breathing Lessons (1988):
  • Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1989)
  • Time magazine's "Book of the Year"
• For Ladder of Years (1995):
  • Finalist for The Orange Prize for Fiction 1996
• For Digging to America (2006):
  • Finalist for The Orange Prize for Fiction 2007
• For A Spool of Blue Thread (2015):
  • Finalist for The Man Booker Prize 2015
  • Finalist for The Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015
• For Redhead By the Side of the Road (2020):
  • Longlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2020
• For Lifetime achievement:
  • Finalist for The Man Booker International Prize 2011
  • The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence 2012

See also

In Spanish: Anne Tyler para niños