Biography

Annie Dillard is considered a major voice in literature since the publishing of her 1974 Pulitzer Prize winner, Pilgrim at TinkerCreek. Dillard has a tremendous reputation for her different works of literature. Dillard has written a novel, essays, poetry and a memoir over her lifetime. The American author is best known for her narrative works in both fiction and nonfiction.

Dillard was born as Meta Ann Doak on April 30, 1945. Dillard was born in Pittsburgh where she was raised by her mother and father. Dillard’s father, Frank Doak, worked as a minor corporate executive, but his real passion was for jazz and taking his boat down the Mississippi. Dillard’s mother, Pam Doak, was very spirited and had a thing for playing jokes on people. 

Annie was the oldest of three daughters; Amy who was three years younger and Molly who was ten years younger. The whole family lived in Pittsburgh and moved from house to house within their neighborhood. In her younger years she would spend summers with her grandparents on Lake Erie. She also went to a Presbyterian church, but her parents did not attend.

From Preschool until fifth grade she attended Pittsburgh Public Schools and from fifth grade on she attended Ellis School in Pittsburgh. Dillard loved to play baseball. She could throw a baseball right down the center of the strike zone. Playing ball became a lifelong passion for Dillard. In school, she played varsity field hockey and basketball.

Drawing and painting were two more passions that would never leave Dillard’s life. Dillard was a very active and outgoing person. She loved to draw and paint pictures of images that amazed her. Above all, was her love for reading. She loved to read all sorts of genres from novels of WWII to field guides. Teachers had little to say about Dillard as a teenager. Teachers did not care for Dillard the way that they should of.

Dillard did everything in her life recklessly. As boys soon came into the picture, she began to hang around bars and she was suspended from school for smoking cigarettes. One day she was invited by some boys to do some drag racing. She was sitting in the front seat when the drag racing car struck the brick wall. She has always loved the feeling of being free, and going fast, which made her recklessness even worse.

Dillard’s family and her head mistress of her school wanted her to attend college in the south to get rid of her rough lifestyle. Dillard left her home in Pittsburgh to attend Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia. Dillard pursued theology, literature and writing. By her sophomore year in college, she was engaged to Richard Dillard and later they were married on June 5, 1964. At the age of twenty she was a wife and completed her BA and MA. 

In 1974 she published a list of poems, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel. In the early 70’s, Dillard was reading a book and was very disappointed. With time, she wrote a better version based off a journal , which soon became Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in 1974. Dillard was in a baseball game when she found out her book was finally published. She had become famous for this novel.

In 1975, Dillard and Richard Dillard divorced and she was forced to move from Roanoke to Lummi Island in Washington to avoid the press and public after winning the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. She then taught at Western Washington University part time as a writer in residence. 

She later married Gary Clevidence, an anthropology professor at Western Washington University. In 1979 Dillard and Clevidence moved east to Middletown Connecticut where Dillard held another teaching position as a writer at Wesleyan university. In 1984, their daughter Cody Rose was born. The family traveled to Cape Cod and spent summers in South Wellfleet, where two girls from Clevidence’s earlier marriage continued to play a role in Dillard’s life.

As all good things come to an end, in 1988 Dillard and Clevidence divorced and she then married Robert Richardson, a professor and author.  As Dillard continued writing, she taught less and less. She and her husband spent time in Key West, Florida. In 1998, Dillard left Wesleyan after 21 years of teaching.

Dillard’s works have been translated into different languages around the world. Three of her works appear on the four different lists of the twentieth century’s best American books. Dillard’s books have received the Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letter, Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, as well as the Coindreau twice. Dillard lets her readings speak for themselves, and hasn’t let her or her work be filmed. As an active writer for thirty years, Dillard’s works of literature, and her reputation as a writer is set in stone for American literature for many years to come. 

 

    Other 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 

   
                                         
      Sources used

• "Annie Dillard - Official Website." Annie Dillard Official Website. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2014. <http://www.anniedillard.com/biography-by-bob-richardson.html>