ANN BEATTIE
NYS Writers Institute Reading - November 11, 1999
Ann Beattie, short story writer and novelist and one of the nation's most important fiction writers, has received critical acclaim for her depiction of the generation of Americans who grew up in the 60s. She has published six collections of short stories including Park City (1998, ISBN 0-679-45506-X), What Was Mine (1991), and The Burning House (1982), and six novels including My Life, Starring Dara Falcon (1997), Another You (1995), Picturing Will (1990), and Chilly Scenes of Winter (1976). She has received numerous awards for her work including an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Ann Beattie grew up in Washington, D.C. She has taught at Harvard College and the University of Virginia, among other places. She and her husband, the artist Lincoln Perry, divide their time between Maine and Key West, Florida.
Park City, Beattie's most recent story collection, chronicles the Woodstock generation from youth to middle age: experimenting with drugs, traveling aimlessly, settling down, breaking up, finding resolution.
"a new Beattie [collection] is almost like a fresh bulletin from the front: We snatch it up, eager to know what's happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no-man's-land known as interpersonal relations." - Margaret Atwood
"Park City is. . .a book that should win the admiration of short story writers and readers everywhere for its pointed reminder of Beattie's unshakably intelligent, deep-hearted, long and unsurpassed devotion to the form." - Lorrie Moore, New York Times Book Review
". . .both superb in itself and an essential piece of history. . .as you move through selected work from Beattie's previous five collections, then back for the new tales, you trace the evolution of one of our era's most vital masters of the short form. . ." - The Washington Post
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