Annie Proulx

Starting as a journalist, her first published work of fiction is thought to be "The Customs Lounge", a science fiction story published in the September 1963 issue of If, under the byline "E.A. Proulx". Another contender, a year later, was a science fiction story called "All the Pretty Little Horses", which appeared in teen magazine Seventeen in June 1964. She subsequently published stories in Esquire magazine and Gray's Sporting Journal in the late 1970s, eventually publishing her first collection in 1988 and her first novel in 1992. Subsequently, she was awarded NEA (in 1992) and Guggenheim (in 1993) fellowships.

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 Saratoga, Wyoming, spending part of the year in northern Newfoundland on a small cove adjacent to L'Anse aux Meadows. Proulx now lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

In 1997, Annie Proulx was awarded the Dos Passos Prize, a mid-career award for American writers. 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). In 2001 Proulx was one of the writers heavily criticized by Brian Reynolds Myers in his polemical work A Reader's Manifesto.

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 for an often brilliant adaptation that clearly conveyed the text of the libretto with music that is rich in imagination and variety. In 2017 she received the Fitzgerald Award for that year for Achievement in American Literature.

Warren County - Vicksburg Public Library

Happy 83rd birthday to Annie Proulx, American novelist and short story writer. Her novel 'The Shipping News' won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was made into a film by the same name. One of her...

Annie Proulx, writer of 'Brokeback Mountain,' turns 82

August 22 marks the birthday of award-winning American author Annie Proulx, best known for writing the book that was adapted into 'Brokeback Mountain.’

Happy Birthday, Annie Proulx

On Saturday, Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain and many more novels and short story collections, celebrated her 80th birthday!    To remind ourselves why Annie Proulx is so absolutely brilliant, a collection of her most moving quotes: “You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background[...]

Literary Birthday – 22 August – Annie Proulx | Writers Write

Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author.