Marilynne Robinson (born Summers; November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. She studied at Pembroke College, the former women’s college at Brown University, and did her Ph.D. at the University of Washington.
She has been writer-in-residence and visiting professor at many universities, and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. She is currently the F. Wendell Miller Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Brown University, Amherst College and Oxford University have awarded Robinson honorary degrees.
Books
Fiction
- Housekeeping (1980)
- Gilead (2004)
- Home (2008)
- Lila (2014)
Uncollected Short Stories
- “Orphans,” in Harper’s (New York), February 1981.
- “Connie Bronson,” in Paris Review, Summer-Fall 1986.
Nonfiction
- Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989)
- The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998)
- Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010)
- When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012)
- The Givenness of Things (2015)
Interviews
Awards
- 1982: Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for best first novel for Housekeeping
- 1982: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction shortlist for Housekeeping
- 1989: National Book Award for Nonfiction shortlist for Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution
- 2004: National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Gilead
- 2005: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Gilead
- 2008: National Book Award finalist for Home
- 2009: Orange Prize for Fiction for Home
- 2011: Man Booker International Prize nominee
- 2012: Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Brown University
- 2013: Man Booker International Prize nominee
- 2014: National Book Critics Circle Award for Lila
- 2016: Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction
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