Anne Tyler Biography

Breathing Lessons About the Author

A highly regarded author of short stories and novels, Anne Tyler is known for her fiction exploring the vicissitudes of human existence in late twentieth-century America. Tyler's readers readily identify with her complex characters and see their own experiences mirrored in her fiction.

While Tyler has yet to write a young adult novel, her adult fiction often makes readers of many ages laugh out loud, and also makes them think—about life, loss, family, death, and all aspects of the human condition.

Tyler was born on October 25, 1941, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her parents were members of the Society of Friends and liberal activists, and the family lived in a series of Quaker communes across the Midwest and South. Anne read voraciously as a child and began to write stories at the age of seven. When she was eleven, the family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where...
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