Donna Tartt

File:Tartt romane.jpg

Tartt's three novels in German, published by Goldmann.

Donna Louise Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American novelist. She wrote the novels The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into a 2019 film of the same name.<ref name="NYOKBS">Template:Cite web</ref> She was included in Time magazine's 2014 "100 Most Influential People" list.<ref name="Time">Patchett, Ann (April 23, 2014). "Donna Tartt" Template:Webarchive. Time.</ref>

Early life and education

Donna Louise Tartt was born on December 23, 1963, to Don and Taylor Tartt, in Greenwood, Mississippi.<ref name="chambers2011">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="britannica-Donna-Tartt">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="evans2017">Template:Cite book</ref> She was raised in the nearby town of Grenada.<ref name="evans2017"/> Her father, Don Tartt, was a rockabilly musician, turned freeway "service station owner-cum-local politician", while her mother, Taylor, was a secretary.<ref name="VanityFair-1992-09"/><ref name="latimes-2002-12-08-ybarra">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="gulfnews-goldfinch-donna-tartt">Template:Cite web</ref> Her parents were avid readers, and her mother would read while driving.<ref name="dazeddigital-donna-tartt">Template:Cite web</ref> As a child, Tartt memorized "really long poems by A. A. Milne", and has described herself as, "this sort of horrible repository of doggerel verse".<ref name="VanityFair-1992-09"/>

Tartt wrote her first poem in 1968, when she was five years old.<ref name="Mississippi Writers Page">Template:Cite web</ref> She was first published at 13, when a sonnet was included in a 1976 edition of the Mississippi Review.<ref name="VanityFair-1992-09">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name="Mississippi Literary Review 1941">Template:Cite web</ref> In high school, she was a freshman cheerleader for the basketball team and worked in the public library.<ref name="latimes-2002-12-08-ybarra"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="elizabeth.lib.ms.us">Template:Cite web</ref> Tartt's essays about patriotism and alcoholism won prizes,<ref name="VanityFair-1992-09"/> and she also wrote "short stories about death" during this period.<ref name="VanityFair-1992-09"/>

In 1981, Tartt enrolled in the University of Mississippi, where she pledged for the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and wrote short stories for The Daily Mississippian.<ref name="VanityFair-1992-09"/> An editor at the paper gave one of her stories to prominent writer Willie Morris, who found Tartt at the Holiday Inn bar one evening and declared her "a genius".<ref name="Mississippi Writers Page"/><ref name="myfriendmymentor">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Oxford, Mississippi#Media</ref> Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss writer-in-residence, admitted the 18-year-old Tartt into his graduate course on the short story. Hannah referred to her as "deeply literary" and "a literary star".<ref name=ParisR>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1982, following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington College. At Bennington, Tartt studied classics with Claude Fredericks, and met fellow students and future authors Bret Easton Ellis, Jonathan Lethem, and Jill Eisenstadt.<ref name="esquire-bennington"/><ref name="britannica-Donna-Tartt"/> Tartt graduated in 1986 with a degree in philosophy.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career

Donna Tartt has spent about ten years writing each of her novels.<ref name="Peretz2014" /><ref name="Interview2013">Template:Cite news</ref>

The Secret History (1992)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> was derived from her time at Bennington College.<ref name="esquire-bennington">Template:Cite journal</ref> She spent eight years writing.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Amanda Urban was her agent and the novel became a critical and financial success.<ref name="olemiss.edu-ms-writers-1999">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It originated the dark academia literary aesthetic, causing it to "explode like a firework" in the literary scene, according to The New York Times.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Tartt's novel The Little Friend (2002) was first published in Dutch because her books sold more per capita in the Netherlands than elsewhere.<ref name="November 2002">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="sun-sentinel-2002-11-10">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

In 2006, Tartt's short story "The Ambush" was included in the Best American Short Stories 2006.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Her 2013 novel The Goldfinch was a bestseller and received the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, though some critics felt the novel was juvenile and not literary.<ref name=Peretz2014>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="newyorker.com/2013/10/21">Template:Cite magazine</ref> The book was adapted into the movie The Goldfinch, which was a critical and commercial failure.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Tartt was not given the option to write the screenplay or act as a producer for the film, and reportedly fired longtime agent Amanda Urban over the deal.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In November 2023, The Queen's Reading Room released an interview with Donna Tartt who confirmed that she was working on her next novel.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life

In 2002, it was reported that Tartt had lived in Greenwich Village, the Upper East Side,<ref name="Newsday-2002">Template:Cite news</ref> and on a farm near Charlottesville, Virginia.<ref name="smh.com.au-Lolita">Template:Cite news,</ref> Tartt is Template:Convert tall.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She has also stated that she would never get married.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In a 2013 interview with The Irish Independent, Tartt stated that she dislikes going on book tours and giving talks, because she finds them mentally exhausting. She stressed that she was not a recluse but rather was maintaining her privacy, and asked rhetorically, "Was it Emerson who talked about the great freedom of American life as the freedom not to participate in the life of the culture, the freedom to shut the door, to close the curtains?"<ref name="Interview2013" />

In 2016, Tartt's cousin, police officer James Lee Tartt, was killed while on duty.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

As of 2016, Virginia Living published that Tartt lived with art gallery owner Neal Guma in Charlottesville, Virginia, on a property they purchased together in 1997.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Tartt also dedicated her second novel to someone named Neal, although she did not elaborate on his identity.

Tartt is a convert to Catholicism and contributed an essay, "The Spirit and Writing in a Secular World", to The Novel, Spirituality and Modern Culture (2000), edited by Paul Fiddes. In her essay she wrote that "faith is vital in the process of making my work and in the reasons I am driven to make it."<ref name="Doino2013">Template:Cite news</ref> However, Tartt also warned of the danger of writers who impose their beliefs or convictions on their novels. She wrote that writers should "shy from asserting those convictions directly in their work."<ref name="Doino2013" /><ref name="VanityFair-1992-09" />

Awards

• 2003 WH Smith Literary Award – The Little Friend
• 2003 Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist – The Little Friend
• 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award (fiction) shortlist – The Goldfinch<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist – The Goldfinch<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction – The Goldfinch<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2014 Time 100 Most Influential People<ref name="Time"/>
• 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence for Fiction – The Goldfinch<ref name="ala.org">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2014 Vanity Fair International Best Dressed List<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Bibliography

Novels

• The Secret History (1992, Alfred A. Knopf)
• The Little Friend (2002, Alfred A. Knopf)
• The Goldfinch (2013, Little, Brown)

Short stories

• "Tam-O'-Shanter", The New Yorker, April 19, 1993, pp. 90–91<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• "A Christmas Pageant", Harper's Magazine, 287.1723, December 1993, pp. 45–51
• "A Garter Snake", GQ, 65.5, May 1995, pp. 89ff
• "The Ambush", The Guardian, June 25, 2005

Nonfiction

• "Sleepytown: A Southern Gothic Childhood, with Codeine", Harper's Magazine 285.1706, July 1992, pp. 60–66

Tartt's great-grandfather gave the five-year-old, for tonsillitis, whiskey, and codeine cough syrup, for two years, when kept home due to tonsillitis, she would read and write poetry.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

• "Basketball Season" in The Best American Sports Writing, edited and with an introduction by Frank Deford, Houghton Mifflin, 1993
• "Team Spirit: Memories of Being a Freshman Cheerleader for the Basketball Team", Harper's Magazine 288.1727, April 1994, pp. 37–40
• "My friend, my mentor, my inspiration". in Template:Cite book
• "Afterword" in True Grit, Charles Portis, Overlook Press, New York, 2010, pp. 255–267
• "Art and Artifice" in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, J. F. Martel, Little Brown Book Group, 2025. Template:ISBN.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Audiobooks read by

Works by Tartt

• The Secret History
• The Little Friend (abridged)
• The Goldfinch

Works by others

• True Grit by Charles Portis (read by and with an afterword by Tartt)
• Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (selections)

General references

• Hargreaves, Tracy (2001). Donna Tartt's "The Secret History". New York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Template:ISBN.
• Kakutani, Michiko (1992). "Students Indulging in Course of Destruction". The New York Times, September 4, 1992.
• Kaplan, James (September 1992). "Smart Tartt". Vanity Fair.
• McOran-Campbell, Adrian (August 2000). The Secret History.
• Tartt, Donna (2000). "Spanish Grandeur in Mississippi". Oxford American, Fall 2000.
• Yee, Danny (1994). "Studying Ancient Greek Warps the Mind of the Young?"
• Template:Cite journal

External links

• Donna Tartt interviewed by Robert Birnbaum at identitytheory.com
• Tartt Interview Template:Webarchive with Jill Eisenstadt in Bomb
• Template:Cite web video at YouTube
• Donna Tartt and Anne Rice interviewed by Ray Suarez, NPR: Talk of the Nation: (October 30, 1997)
• Donna Tartt interviewed by Lynn Neary, NPR: Talk of the Nation: (November 5, 2002)
• Tartt on reading and her Scottish grandmother Template:Webarchive at Maud Newton
• Tartt in Vogue on her teenage worship of Hunter S. Thompson Template:Webarchive at Maud Newton
• Template:Cite web
• Donna Tartt interviewed by James Naughtie at BBC Radio 4 – Bookclub (January 5, 2014)