Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt is an award-winning American novelist, best known for The Goldfinch, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A New York Times bestseller and winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, The Goldfinch is Tartt’s third novel, and has become one of the most beloved and acclaimed titles of recent times.

Born in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1963, Tartt began her writing career at the age of five, with her first story, “The Tortoise’s Joke”, written for a class bulletin board. She went on to study French and Greek literature at the University of Mississippi, and was an editor at the student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian. Her debut novel, The Secret History, was published in 1992, about a group of Classics students who become embroiled in a mysterious murder. The novel was an instant bestseller, and helped to launch Tartt into literary stardom.

Tartt followed up The Secret History with The Little Friend in 2002. A coming-of-age novel set in a small town of Mississippi and full of Southern Gothic gothic imagery, The Little Friend was both a critical and commercial success. Tartt’s third novel, The Goldfinch, was published in 2013, and follows the life of a young boy, whose mother dies in a tragic accident. The boy, Theodore Decker, steals a priceless Dutch painting, The Goldfinch, and the novel follows his experiences of grief and guilt, as well as his attempts to protect the painting.

The Goldfinch has become the defining work of Tartt’s career. It has won multiple awards and honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It has sold millions of copies, making it one of the best-selling novels of the 21st century. It is currently being adapted into a feature film starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman, due for release in 2021.

Tartt’s writing style is often compared to that of other celebrated American novelists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger. Her writing is marked by lush description, suspenseful plotting and psychological insight. Her fiction focuses heavily on themes of loss, longing and existential crisis, displaying masterful use of symbolism, metaphor and allegory.

Despite her continued success and high profile, Tartt remains relatively private. She makes few public appearances and rarely gives interviews. Though she has earned an esteemed place in the literary world, she has also won a legion of passionate readers, who await her next work with eager anticipation. There is little doubt that Donna Tartt is one of the most important and acclaimed writers of modern times.