DONNA TARTT
Donna Tartt
Born December 23, 1963 (age 44)
Occupation novelist
Writing period 1992—present
Influences J. M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Willie
Morris, George Orwell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hunter S. Thompson, Evelyn Waugh
Donna Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American writer who received critical
acclaim for her two novels, The Secret History (1992) and The Little Friend (2002).
Tartt was the 2003 winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend.
The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi but
raised 32 miles away in Grenada, Mississippi. At age five, she wrote her first
poem, and she first saw publication in a Mississippi literary review when she
was 13 years old.
Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, she pledged to the sorority
Kappa Kappa Gamma. Her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she
was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an
Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, admitted Tartt into his graduate short story
course where, stated Hannah, she ranked higher than the graduate students.
Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington
College in 1982. There she met Bennington students Bret Easton Ellis and Jill
Eisenstadt.
Donna Tartt
Born December 23, 1963 (age 44)
Occupation novelist
Writing period 1992—present
Influences J. M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Willie
Morris, George Orwell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hunter S. Thompson, Evelyn Waugh
Donna Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American writer who received critical
acclaim for her two novels, The Secret History (1992) and The Little Friend (2002).
Tartt was the 2003 winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend.
The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi but
raised 32 miles away in Grenada, Mississippi. At age five, she wrote her first
poem, and she first saw publication in a Mississippi literary review when she
was 13 years old.
Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, she pledged to the sorority
Kappa Kappa Gamma. Her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she
was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an
Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, admitted Tartt into his graduate short story
course where, stated Hannah, she ranked higher than the graduate students.
Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington
College in 1982. There she met Bennington students Bret Easton Ellis and Jill
Eisenstadt.