Ann Patchett

Biography

Ann Patchett was born on December 2, 1963, in Los Angeles, to Frank Patchett (a Los Angeles police captain who arrested Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan) and Jeanne Ray (a nurse who later became a novelist). She is the younger of two daughters. Her mother and father divorced when she was young. Her mother remarried and when Patchett was six years old the family moved to Nashville. She has described her stepfather as a "very, very weird guy" who had her carry a gun as early as age sixteen, and she partially attributes her disinterest in texting to his forcing her mother to carry a pager and respond to him on demand.

Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a private Catholic school for girls in Nashville run by the Sisters of Mercy. After graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.

After college, Ann Patchett attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she lived with the memoirist and poet Lucy Grealy. Their time as roommates and their life-long friendship was the subject of her 2004 memoir Truth & Beauty. In her early twenties Patchett married; however, the marriage lasted only about a year.

In her late twenties, Patchett won a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; during her time there, she wrote her first novel The Patron Saint of Liars, which was published in 1992. In 2010, she co-founded the bookstore Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes, in Nashville. It opened in November 2011. In 2016, Parnassus Books expanded, adding a bookmobile expanding the reach of the bookstore in Nashville. Patchett lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender.

Writing

Patchett's first published work was in The Paris Review, a story which appeared before she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. For nine years, Patchett worked at Seventeen magazine, where she wrote primarily non-fiction. The magazine only published one of every five articles she wrote. She ended her relationship with the magazine after getting into a dispute with an editor and exclaiming, "I’ll never darken your door again!"

Patchett has written for numerous publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, O, The Oprah Magazine, ELLE, GQ, Gourmet, and Vogue. In 1992, she published The Patron Saint of Liars. The novel was made into a television movie of the same title in 1998. Her second novel Taft won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in fiction in 1994. Her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, was released in 1997. In 2001, she achieved a breakthrough with her fourth novel Bel Canto, becoming a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and winning the PEN/Faulkner Award.

A friend of writer Lucy Grealy, Patchett wrote a memoir about their relationship, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. Patchett's novel, Run, was released in October 2007. What Now?, published in April 2008, is an essay based on a commencement speech she delivered at her alma mater in 2006.She is the editor of the 2006 volume of the anthology series The Best American Short Stories. In 2011, she published State of Wonder, a novel set in the Amazon jungle, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. In 2016 she published the novel Commonwealth to widespread critical acclaim. Patchett called the book her "autobiographical first novel," explaining, “The wonderful thing about publishing this book at 52 is that I know that I am [already] capable of working from a place of deep imagination.”

In 2019, Patchett published her first children's book, Lambslide, and the novel The Dutch House, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In November 2021, she published These Precious Days, an essay collection. In 2023, Ann Patchett published a novel called Tom Lake, and it made The New York Times Best Seller list.

When asked how to encourage people to slow down and contemplate more during a 2024 interview for the BBC, she responded:

Wouldn't it be lovely if people sat quietly for longer periods of time?... I do, because I write novels for a living... I'm very, very careful with myself because I don't want anything to disrupt my ability to concentrate on one thing for long periods of time. To that end, I do not watch television under any circumstances, I do not have a cell phone, and I participate in no form of social media. I have never looked at Facebook. That's kind of interesting, because my bookstore has a huge social media presence and I make videos about the books that I'm reading, but I never watch them.

Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages.

Awards and honors

For specific works

• Nashville Banner Tennessee Writer of the Year Award, 1994
• Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize (Taft), 1994
• National Book Critics Circle Award finalist (Bel Canto), 2001
• PEN/Faulkner Award (Bel Canto), 2002
• Orange Prize (Bel Canto), 2002
• BookSense Book of the Year (Bel Canto), 2003
• Wellcome Trust Book Prize shortlist (State of Wonder), 2011

For corpus

• Guggenheim Fellowship, 1995 (mid-career)
• In 2012, Patchett was recognized on the Time 100 list as one of the most influential people in the world by Time.
• Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award (body of work), 2014
• 2014 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
• American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2017
• Carl Sandburg Literary Award from Chicago Public Library Foundation, 2024
• PEN/Audible Literary Service Award, 2026 (announced December 2, 2025)

Published works

Novels

• Reprinted in the following year, see

Nonfiction

References

References

1. "Ann Patchett".
2. Maher, John. (May 4, 2020). "Moser, Whitehead, McDaniel, Grandin, Boyer, Brown Win 2020 Pulitzers".
3. Lesser, Wendy. (22 November 2013). "What's In Store". The New York Times.
4. Lundquist, Molly. "State of Wonder - Ann Patchett - Author Biography - LitLovers".
5. (2009). "Twenty-First-Century American Novelists: Second Series". Gale Cengage Learning.
6. Kay, Katty. "Why Author Ann Patchett bought a bookshop". BBC News.
7. (June 27, 2001). "Exclusive to Powell's, Author Interviews: Ann Patchett Hits All the Right Notes".
8. "Meet the Writers: Ann Patchett". barnesandnoble.com.
9. Patchett, Ann. "About Ann". annpatchett.com.
10. Alex Witchel. (2021-11-30). "Ann Patchett Has Thoughts on a Bunch of Subjects". The New York Times.
11. Patchett, Ann. (December 2012). "The Bookstore Strikes Back".
12. Alter, Alexandra. (Mar 24, 2016). "Ann Patchett's Nashville Bookstore Hits the Road, With Dogs in Tow". The New York Times.
13. "Ann Patchett". Amazon.com.
14. Puig, Claudia. "'A Happy Marriage' weds Patchett's prose to essays".
15. Gyllenhaal, Stephen. (1998-04-05). "The Patron Saint of Liars".
16. "The Magician's Assistant".
17. (September 24, 2008). "''Book Club Girl'' Talks With Ann Patchett, Author of ''Run''".
18. Books, Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's. "Best American Short Stories 2006 by Patchett, Ann".
19. (2012-04-17). "Orange prize shortlist 2012 - in pictures".
20. Patchett, Ann. (September 8, 2017). "Ann Patchett Calls 'Commonwealth' Her 'Autobiographical First Novel'".
21. Hilboldt Allport, Brandy. (4 May 2019). "Read All About It: Patchett tries hand at children's book with 'Lambslide'".
22. "Ann Patchett Explains Why She Had to Totally Rewrite her New Novel 'The Dutch House' And Her Problem with Villains".
23. Maher, John. (May 4, 2020). "Moser, Whitehead, McDaniel, Grandin, Boyer, Brown Win 2020 Pulitzers".
24. "Combined Print & E-Book Fiction - Best Sellers - Books - The New York Times". The New York Times.
25. "World Book Club - Ann Patchett: The Dutch House - BBC Sounds".
26. "In "These Precious Days," Ann Patchett reflects on her life and art".
27. Owens, Ann Marie Deer. "Vanderbilt Libraries host conversation with Moser and Patchett".
28. NBCC Staff. (2001). "All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists: 2001 Awards, Fiction Finalists".
29. PEN/Faulkner Staff. (2002). "Past Winners & Finalists: 2002—Ann Patchett, ''Bel Canto''".
30. Mark Brown. (April 17, 2012). "Orange Prize 2012 Shortlist Puts Ann Patchett in Running for Second Victory". The Guardian.
31. (27 June 2002). "Ann Patchett Wins Orange Prize for Fiction 2002". Writers Write Inc..
32. "Book Sense Book of the Year - Book awards - LibraryThing".
33. Wellcome Collection Staff. (2011). "All books A-Z: ''State of Wonder'', By Ann PatchettS, Shortlist 2011".
34. Guggenheim Fndn. Staff. (1995). "Fellows: Ann Patchett, 1995; Field of Study, Fiction".
35. Elizabeth Gilbert. (April 18, 2012). "The World's 100 Most Influential People, 2012: Ann Patchett, Writer".
36. Watts, James D. Jr.. (March 30, 2014). "Ann Patchett is 2014 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award Recipient". [[Tulsa World]].
37. "Kenyon Review for Literary Achievement".
38. "2017 Newly Elected Members – American Academy of Arts and Letters".
39. (2024-06-25). "Chance the Rapper, Ann Patchett and Cristina Henríquez win 2024 Library Foundation awards".
40. "Meet the 2024 Library Foundation Award Honorees".
41. (2025-12-02). "2026 Literary Gala Honorees Announced: Novelist and Essayist Ann Patchett and Oscar-Nominated Film Producer Jason Blum".
42. Kellogg, Carolyn. (August 29, 2011). "Ann Patchett's lessons on writing, from Byliner". Los Angeles Times.