The Beat Generation eschewed the hallmarks of post-war American culture and status symbols, preferring to wander and observe, free spirited, across the U.S. In the 1990s, Donna Tartt and her literary cohorts at Vermont’s Bennington College insulated where the Beats isolated, forming a tight club where their stories and attitude reflected mostly their shared experience.
Wildly popular amongst jaded Gen Xers, Tartt and friends probed unapologetically into the drug-fueled privilege of tiny liberal arts college life, worldbuilding an enviable, if not relatable, body of work that often moved from the page to the silver screen. Tartt, who wrote her first poem when she was five years old and published her first sonnet in The Mississippi Review at the age of 13, was a quickly rising star.
As an undergrad at the University of Mississippi, she caught the attention and praise of fellow writer Willie Morris, who considered Tartt a rare genius. This backing enabled her to take graduate-level literature courses as an 18-year-old freshman, and after just one year at Mississippi, she transferred to Bennington College and began her literary transformation. Around ten years later, at the age of 29, Tartt published “The Secret History,” a debut novel that quickly became a critical and financial success. While fans eagerly anticipated her next work, Tartt is known for her slow and methodical writing process, one that has produced one novel per decade since. With any luck, the world is due another Tartt work in the next year or so.
Tartt converted to Catholicism as an adult, and credits her faith as the driving force behind her writing. Her 2002 novel “The Little Friend” was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and won the WH Smith Literary Award. “The Goldfinch,” published in 2013, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and received the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction as well as The Pulitzer Prize for fiction.