Annie Dillard

Dillard's works have been compared to those by Virginia Woolf, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, William Blake, and John Donne,[2] and she cites Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Graham Greene, George Eliot, and Ernest Hemingway among her favorite authors.[8][9]

In her first book of poems, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974), Dillard first articulated themes that she would later explore in other works of prose.[10]

Dillard's journals served as a source for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), a nonfiction narrative about the natural world near her home in Roanoke, Virginia. Although the book contains named chapters, it is not (as some critics assumed) a collection of essays.[10] Early chapters were published in The Atlantic, Harpers, and Sports Illustrated. The book describes God by studying creation, leading one critic to call her "one of the foremost horror writers of the 20th Century."[10] In The New York Times, Eudora Welty said the work was "admirable writing" that reveals "a sense of wonder so fearless and unbridled... [an] intensity of experience that she seems to live in order to declare," but "I honestly don't know what [Dillard] is talking about at... times."[11]

The book won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. Dillard was 28, making her the youngest woman to have won the award.[12]

One day, Dillard decided to begin a project in which she would write about whatever happened on Lummi Island within a three-day time period. When a plane crashed on the second day, Dillard began to contemplate the problem of pain and God's allowance of "natural evil to happen."[10]

Although Holy the Firm (1977) was only 66 pages long, it took her 14 months, writing full-time, to complete the manuscript. In The New York Times Book Review novelist Frederick Buechner called it "a rare and precious book." Some critics wondered whether Dillard was under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs while writing the book. Dillard replied that she was not.[10]

Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982) is a book of 14 short nonfiction narrative and travel essays. The essay "Life on the Rocks: The Galapagos" won the New York Women's Press Club award, and "Total Eclipse" was chosen for Best American Essays of the [20th] Century (2000). As Dillard herself notes, "'The Weasel is lots of fun; the much-botched church service is (I think) hilarious."[10] Following the first hardcover edition of the book, the order of essays was changed. Initially "Living Like Weasels" was first, followed by "An Expedition to the Pole." "Total Eclipse" was found between "On a Hill Far Away" and "Lenses."

The essays in Teaching a Stone to Talk:

• "Total Eclipse"
• "An Expedition to the Pole"
• "In the Jungle"
• "Living Like Weasels"
• "The Deer at Providencia"
• "Teaching a Stone to Talk"
• "On a Hill Far Away"
• "Lenses"
• "Life on the Rocks: The Galapagos"
• "A Field of Silence"
• "God in the Doorway"
• "Mirages"
• "Sojourner"
• "Aces and Eights"

In Living by Fiction (1982), Dillard produced her "theory about why flattening of character and narrative cannot happen in literature as it did when the visual arts rejected deep space for the picture plane." She later said that, in the process of writing this book, she talked herself into writing an old-fashioned novel.[10]

Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984) is a work of journalism. One part takes place in China, where Dillard was a member of a delegation of six American writers and publishers, following the fall of the Gang of Four. In the second half, Dillard hosts a group of Chinese writers, whom she takes to Disneyland along with Allen Ginsberg. Dillard describes it as "hilarious."[10]

The Writing Life (1989) is a collection of short essays in which Dillard "discusses with clear eye and wry wit how, where and why she writes."[13] The Boston Globe called it "a kind of spiritual Strunk & White, a small and brilliant guidebook to the landscape of a writer's task." The Chicago Tribune wrote that, "For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague." The Detroit News called it "a spare volume...that has the power and force of a detonating bomb."[10] According to a biography of Dillard written by her husband Robert D. Richardson, Dillard "repudiates The Writing Life, except for the last chapter, the true story of stunt pilot Dave Rahm."[14]

Dillard's first novel, The Living (1992), centers on the first European settlers of the Pacific Northwest coast. While writing the book, she never allowed herself to read works that postdated the year she was writing about, nor did she use anachronistic words.[10]

Mornings Like This (1995) is a book dedicated to found poetry. Dillard took and arranged phrases from various old books, creating poems that are often ironic in tone. The poems are not related to the original books' themes. "A good trick should look hard and be easy," said Dillard. "These poems were a bad trick. They look easy and are really hard."[10]

For the Time Being (1999) is a work of narrative nonfiction. Its topics mirror the various chapters of the book and include "birth, sand, China, clouds, numbers, Israel, encounters, thinker, evil, and now." In her own words on this book, she writes, "I quit the Catholic Church and Christianity; I stay near Christianity and Hasidism."[10]

The Maytrees (2007) is Dillard's second novel. The story begins after World War II and tells of a lifelong love between a husband and wife who live in Provincetown, Cape Cod. It was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2008.[10]

The Abundance, a collection of essays curated by the author, was published in 2017.[15]

In 1975, Dillard moved to the Pacific Northwest and taught for four years at Fairhaven College and Western Washington University. In 1980, she began teaching in the English department of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut,[16] where she remained until she retired Professor Emerita in 2002.[1]

In 1965, at age 20, Dillard married her creative writing professor, Richard Dillard.[12][2] In 1975, they divorced amicably and she moved from Roanoke to Lummi Island near Bellingham, Washington.[2]

In 1976, she married Gary Clevidence, an anthropology professor at Fairhaven College, and they have a child, Cody Rose, born in 1984.[2][21] Dillard and Clevidence remained married until 1988.[21]

In 1988, Dillard married historical biographer Robert D. Richardson, whom she met after sending him a fan letter about his book Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind.[2][8][22] They were married until Richardson's death in 2020.

After college Dillard says she became "spiritually promiscuous." Her first prose book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, makes references not only to Christ and the Bible, but also to Islam, and Judaism, Buddhism, and Inuit spirituality. Dillard for a while converted to Roman Catholicism around 1988. This was described in detail in a New York Times overview of her work in 1992.[2]

In 1994, she won the Campion Award, given to a Catholic writer every year by the editors of America.[23] In her 1999 book, For the Time Being, she describes her abandonment of Christianity, describing the supposed absurdity of some Christian doctrines, while stating she still stays near Christianity, and continuing to valorize Catholic writer Teilhard de Chardin. Her personal website lists her religion as "none."[16]

Sales of Dillard's paintings benefit Partners in Health, a Boston-based nonprofit international health organization founded by Dr. Paul Farmer.[24] Dillard's art is available on her website.