Early Life
The eldest of four children, she was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father was a chemist and her mother a social worker. Her early childhood was spent in a succession of Quaker communities in the mountains of North Carolina and in Raleigh. She didn't attend a school until she was 11 and this unorthodox upbringing enabled her to view "the normal world with a certain amount of distance and surprise".
She graduated at 19 from Duke University, and completed graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University in New York City. She worked as a librarian and bibliographer before moving to Maryland.
Read more about this topic: Anne Tyler
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769,... he had said of them, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist—the only thing he’s good for—is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. Even if it’s only his view of a meaning. That’s what he’s for—to give his view of life.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)