Anne Tyler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published 19 novels, the best known of which are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Accidental Tourist, and Breathing Lessons. The former two were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the third won it. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her ?brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail,? and her ?rigorous and artful style? and ?astute and open language.? While many of her characters have been described as quirky or eccentric, she has managed to make them seem real through skillfully fleshing out their inner lives in great depth. 

October 25th, 1941 in Minneapolis (Age 83)