The Writing Life

How do you prepare yourself, all alone, to enter an extraordinary state on an ordinary morning? In The Writing Life, Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard offers up her own trials in the pursuit of inspiration: the absurdity, the fierce determination and the sacrifices (warm feet; gainful employment; peace of mind). Her perennial guide, which wrestles with the hubris and insanity of the creative process, has been an inspiration and a comfort to writers for nearly forty years.

Annie Dillard was born in 1945 in Pennsylvania. She is a much-celebrated poet, novelist and essayist and author of thirteen books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal for her work deepening the understanding of the human experience.