Happy Birthday, Annie Dillard

Born April 30, 1945, Pittsburgh, PA

Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates the eightieth birthday of author Annie Dillard. A prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction, Dillard received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay in 2000, and a National Humanities Medal in 2015. She was the guest editor of The Best American Essays 1988.

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Annie Dillard, 2011, Phyllis Rose.

“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.”

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) won Dillard the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982), a collection of narrative and travel essays, contains her essay “Total Eclipse,” which was reprinted in The Best American Essays of the Century. The Writing Life (1989) is a collection of craft-oriented essays.

“Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?”

First published essay:

• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974).

Select nonfiction bibliography:

• Holy the Firm (Harper & Row, 1977).

• Living by Fiction (HarperCollins, 1983).

• For the Time Being (Knopf, 1999).

Essays by Annie Dillard reprinted (R) in The Best American Essays (BAE), or listed in Notables (N):

• “How to Live,” Image, 2001 (BAE 2002, N).

• “The Wreck of Time,” Harper’s Magazine, 1998 (BAE 1999, N).

• “For the Time Being,” Notre Dame Magazine, 1998 (BAE 1999, R).

• “The Stunt Pilot,” Esquire, 1989 (BAE 1990, R).

• “Schedules,” Tikkun, 1988 (BAE 1989, R).

• “Making Contact,” The Yale Review, 1988 (BAE 1989, N).

• “Singing with the Fundamentalists,” The Yale Review, 1985 (BAE 1986, N).

See also:

Visit Annie Dillard’s official website, including a list of scholarly work on her writing.

Listen to or read this interview with Dillard, NPR, 2016.

Listen to this interview where Dillard discusses her first novel, Fresh Air Archive, 1992.

Listen to this talk from Dillard at a literary arts event, Literary Arts, 1989.

Read “Contemplating the Infinite with Annie Dillard,” by John Freeman, LitHub, 2016.

Read “The Annie Dillard Show,” by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, The Nation, 2016.