Proulx, << proo, >> E. Annie (1935-…), an American author, won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Shipping News (1993). She set the novel in the harsh climate and bleak landscape of Newfoundland. The story focuses on a man and his two daughters who relocate from the United States to Newfoundland following the accidental death of the man’s wife. Critics praised the novel for its humor, sympathetic treatment of offbeat characters, and vivid descriptions of the Newfoundland countryside and history.
Proulx first gained attention with a collection of nine short stories published as Heart Songs (1988). The stories are set in northern New England and, like The Shipping News, emphasize a beautiful but stark landscape. Accordion Crimes (1996) is a collection of stories that follows an accordion as it changes owners over a 100-year period. Proulx’s stories about the modern West are collected in Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999), Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 (2004), and Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 (2008). Close Range includes the story “Brokeback Mountain,” which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning motion picture also titled Brokeback Mountain (2005). The story explores the relationship that develops between two young men working as sheepherders in the West in the 1960’s.
Proulx’s first novel, Postcards (1992), traces the decline of a New England farm family. Her novel That Old Ace in the Hole (2002) is set in the barren landscape of the Panhandle region of northern Texas. Barkskins (2016) is an epic story of the descendants of colonial loggers and the ways in which the deforestation of North America affects them. Proulx also wrote a memoir, Bird Cloud (2011).
Edna Annie Proulx was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on Aug. 22, 1935. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1969 and received an M.A. degree from Sir George Williams (now Concordia) University in Montreal in 1973. From 1975 to 1988, Proulx supported herself as a free-lance author, writing magazine articles and “how to” books on such subjects as gardening, cooking, and building fences. The success of Heart Songs allowed Proulx to become a full-time fiction writer.
