“The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.” – Donna Tartt
Born in
1963, Tartt is a writer whose pace is something I like to point to when
talking about my own – running to the “slow and steady wins the race”
type. That translates into about a book
every 10 years with a few short stories and essays sprinkled in between.
Her novel The Little Friend, released
in 2003, won the WH Smith Literary Award, and her 2013 book The Goldfinch won The Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction – not a bad track record. On top
of that, she’s twice been named to Time
Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list.
A native of Mississippi, Tartt
started writing as a first-year student at Ole Miss under the tutelage of
fellow Mississippi author Barry Hannah, who was serving as Writer-in-Residence
at the University. Struck by her
enthusiasm and ability, he enrolled her in his Graduate writing class. Eventually she transferred to the renowned
Bennington College (Vermont) writing program.
Her experiences there, along with her vivid imagination, led to her best-selling
first novel The Secret History in
1992.
“My novels aren't really generated
by a single conceptual spark,” she said.
“It's more
a
process of many different elements that come together unexpectedly over a long
period of time.”
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