Annie Proulx

E. Annie Proulx was born in Connecticut to an American mother and a French-Canadian father. She was the eldest of her parents’ five daughters, and the family spent much of Proulx’s childhood moving around the East Coast of America due to her father’s work in the textile industry. Proulx demonstrated a talent for writing early in life. She was married three times; she dropped out of college to marry her first husband when she was just 20 years old. Later, she returned to school and earned her bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Vermont and an M.A. in history from Concordia University. She pursued but did not complete a PhD when she was in her 40s. She has four children, one with her first husband and three with her second. Proulx worked as a freelance journalist for many years before publishing her first novel, Postcards, at the age of 56. Her body of work, which includes five novels, four short story collections, and 10 works of nonfiction (gardening books, cookbooks, essay collections, and memoirs) has earned her no fewer than 23 awards, including a PEN/Faulkner award for Postcards, and both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for The Shipping News. Proulx’s affinity for nature drew her to Wyoming in the mid-1990s, where she lived for many years. Beginning in the mid-2010s, her work took on a decidedly ecological focus, with the publication of a collection of essays on climate change and a novel, Barkskins, focused on the environmental impact of the lumber industry dating back to the 17th century.