Edna Ann Proulx (/pruː/PROO; born August 22, 1935) is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.[1]
Proulx was born Edna Ann Proulx in Norwich, Connecticut, to Lois Nellie (née Gill) and Georges-Napoléon Proulx.[5] Her first name honored one of her mother's aunts. She is of English and French-Canadian ancestry.[6][7] Her maternal forebears came to America in 1635, 15 years after the Mayflower arrived.[8]
Proulx lived in multiple states along the East Coast during her childhood as her father worked his way up through the textile industry.[9][10][11] She wrote her first story at the age of 10, while sick with chicken pox.[9] She graduated from Deering High School in Portland, Maine.[12] She briefly attended Colby College, where she met her first husband, H. Ridgely Bullock, Jr., and dropped out to marry him in 1955.[10] She later returned to college, studying at the University of Vermont from 1966 to 1969, and graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in History in 1969. She earned her M.A. in history from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, Quebec in 1973.[13] Proulx pursued a PhD at Concordia and passed her oral examinations in 1975, but abandoned her dissertation before completing the degree. In 1999, Concordia awarded her an honorary doctorate.[14]
Proulx lived for more than 30 years in Vermont, has married and divorced three times, and has three sons and a daughter (Jonathan, Gillis, Morgan, and Sylvia). In 1994, she moved to Bird Cloud, a ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, spending part of the year in northern Newfoundland on a small cove adjacent to L'Anse aux Meadows. As of 2019, Proulx lived in Port Townsend, Washington.[15]
Writing career and recognition
Starting as a journalist, her first published work of fiction was "The Customs Lounge", a science fiction story published in the September 1963 issue of If, under the byline "E.A. Proulx".[16]
A year later, her science fiction story "All the Pretty Little Horses" appeared in the teen magazine Seventeen in June 1964. She subsequently published stories in Esquire magazine and Gray's Sporting Journal in the late 1970s, as well as how-to manuals for cooking and gardening.[17][18] Proulx published her first short-story collection, Heart Songs, in 1988 and her first novel, Postcards, in 1992.[11] She was the first woman to receive the PEN/Faulkner Award, which was awarded to Postcards.[19] She was awarded a NEA fellowship and a Guggenheim fellowship in 1992.[20][2] Her 1993 novel The Shipping News was adapted for a 2001 film. Set in Newfoundland yet written by someone "from away"[21] (not from Newfoundland), the novel stresses the vicarious quality of Proulx' writing.
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.[22]
In 1997, Proulx was awarded the Dos Passos Prize, a mid-career award for American writers.[23] 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. 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, (Proulx herself edited the 1997 edition of this series) and later by novelist John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century (1999).[19]
In 2007, the composer Charles Wuorinen approached Proulx with the idea of turning her short story "Brokeback Mountain" into an opera. The opera of the same name with a libretto by Proulx herself premiered January 28, 2014, at the Teatro Real in Madrid. It was praised as an often brilliant adaptation that clearly conveyed the text of the libretto with music that is rich in imagination and variety.[24][25][26][27][28] Proulx published her first non-fiction book, Bird Cloud: A Memoir, largely based on her former Wyoming ranch of the same name.[18][29] In 2017, she received the Fitzgerald Award for that year for Achievement in American Literature.[30]
Foreword (2018) In: Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming's Ungulates. Alethea Y. Steingisser, Emilene Ostlind, Hall Sawyer, James E. Meacham, Matthew J. Kauffman, and William J. Rudd (Eds.).ISBN978-0870719431
Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis (2022)[31]
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)
^Hennessy, D. M. (2007). Annie Proulx. In R. E. Lee & P. Meanor (Eds.), Dictionary of Literary Biography: Vol. 335. American Short-Story Writers Since World War II. Detroit: Gale.
^Annie Proulx. (2013). In J. W. Hunter (Ed.), Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 331). Detroit: Gale.
^Jukka Petäjä, Maisema on ihmisen kehys ja varjo, Helsingin Sanomat, October 26, 2011, pg. C4. (in Finnish)
Hennessy, Denis M. "Annie Proulx."American Short-Story Writers Since World War II: Fifth Series. Ed. Richard E. Lee and Patrick Meanor. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 335.
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