E. Annie Proulx

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Edna Annie Proulx (pronounced /pru:/) (born August 22, 1935) is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994. Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning major motion picture released in 2005. Brokeback Mountain received massive critical acclaim and went on to be nominated for a leading eight Academy Awards, winning three of them. She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards. She has written most of her stories and books simply as Annie Proulx, but has also carried the name E. Annie Proulx.

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[edit] Personal life and writing

She was born in Norwich, Connecticut to parents of French-Canadian ancestry. She graduated from Deering High School in Portland, Maine, then attended Colby College "for a short period in the 1950s." She later returned to school, studying at the University of Vermont from 1966 to 1969, and graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts in History in 1969. She got her Master of Arts from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, Quebec in 1973 and pursued, but did not complete, her Ph.D. Starting as a journalist, she did not begin writing fiction until she was in her fifties. Subsequently, she held NEA and Guggenheim fellowships.

A few years after receiving much attention for The Shipping News, she had the following comment on her celebrity status: "It's not good for one's view of human nature, that's for sure. You begin to see, when invitations are coming from festivals and colleges to come read (for an hour for a hefty sum of money), that the institutions are head-hunting for trophy writers. Most don't particularly care about your writing or what you're trying to say. You're there as a human object, one that has won a prize. It gives you a very odd, meat-rack kind of sensation." [1]

In 1997, Proulx was awarded the Dos Passos Prize. Proulx has twice won the O. Henry Prize for the year's best short story. In 1998, she won for "Brokeback Mountain," which had appeared in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997. (The story has since become an award-winning 2005 movie, directed by Ang Lee.) Proulx won again the following year for "The Mud Below," which appeared in The New Yorker June 22 and 29, 1999. Both appear in her 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The lead story in this collection, entitled "The Half-Skinned Steer," was selected by author Garrison Keillor for inclusion in "The Best American Short Stories 1998," and later by novelist John Updike for inclusion in "The Best American Short Stories of the Century" published in 1999.

Proulx's most famous critic is BR Myers, who attacked the writer extensively in his A Reader's Manifesto. Myers claimed that Proulx is purposely incoherent and allusive. He sees her as part of a problematic trend in American literature in which writers are praised simply because their prose is so difficult to understand. Countercritics, for instance, The Complete Review have complained that Myers has unfairly assumed that Proulx has a canonical status which she in fact does not enjoy.

Proulx lived for more than 30 years in Vermont, was married three times, and has three sons and a daughter (named Jon, Gillis, Morgan and Muffy). At age 70, she moved to Arvada, Wyoming, where she writes novels.


[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Awards

Literary Awards and Prize Collections:

  • 2002 — Best Foreign Language Novels of 2002 / Best American Novel Award, Chinese Publishing Association and Peoples' Literature Publishing House (That Old Ace in the Hole)
  • 2000 — WILLA Literary Award, Women Writing the West
  • 2000 — Borders Original Voices Award in Fiction (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)
  • 2000 — "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water," Best American Short Stories 2000
  • 2000 — English-Speaking Union’s Ambassador Book Award (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)
  • 2000 — The New Yorker Book Award Best Fiction 1999 (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)
  • 1999 — "Half-Skinned Steer" inc. Best American Short Stories of the Century, ed. J. Updike
  • 1999 — "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World," The Best American Short Stories 1999
  • 1999 — "The Mud Below," O. Henry Awards Prize Stories 1999
  • 1998 — "Half-Skinned Steer" inc. Best American Short Stories 1998
  • 1997 — Dos Passos Prize for Literature, Longwood College (for body of work)
  • 1993 — Irish Times International Fiction Prize (The Shipping News)
  • 1993 — Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction (The Shipping News)

[edit] Film adaptations

[edit] External links

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