Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.) is an American novelist and short-story writer whose comedies of manners are marked by compassionate wit and precise details of domestic life. She won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel Breathing Lessons (1988).

Tyler, the daughter of Quakers, spent her early years in North Carolina and in various Quaker communities in the Midwest and South. At age 16 she entered Duke University, graduating three years later. She worked as a bibliographer at Duke and as a librarian at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, before settling in Baltimore, Maryland, where she turned to writing full-time.

Tyler’s first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964. Though it received little critical attention, it revealed the polished prose and understated examination of personal isolation and the difficulty of interpersonal communication that would also characterize her later work. Publication of The Tin Can Tree (1965), A Slipping-Down Life (1970; film 1999), and The Clock Winder (1972) followed, but it was not until the appearance of Celestial Navigation (1974) and Searching for Caleb (1975) that Tyler came to nationwide attention.

Tyler’s smooth witty style and her descriptions of modern Southern life won her many readers, and her next novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), was a national best seller. Her highly successful novel The Accidental Tourist (1985) examines the life of a recently divorced man who writes travel guides for businessmen. In 1988 it was made into a film directed by Lawrence Kasdan and starring William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, and Geena Davis. That year Tyler also published Breathing Lessons, which explores a couple’s relationship as they drive to a funeral; it won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1989.

Tyler’s later books include Saint Maybe (1991); Ladder of Years (1995); A Patchwork Planet (1998); Digging to America (2006); The Beginner’s Goodbye (2012); and A Spool of Blue Thread (2015). Vinegar Girl (2016), a retelling of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, was written for the Hogarth Shakespeare series. In 2018 Tyler released Clock Dance. Redhead by the Side of the Road (2020) centers on a tech expert who finds his highly organized life upended, while French Braid (2022) follows a family over six decades.

In 2025 Tyler published her 25th novel, Three Days in June. As with most of her fiction, the story takes place in Baltimore and centers on a divorced couple as they prepare for their daughter’s wedding.

Several of Tyler’s novels were adapted for television. She also wrote and published many short stories and book reviews. Tyler was married to Iranian novelist and psychiatrist Taghi Modarressi from 1963 until his death in 1997; the couple had two children.