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Edna Ann Proulx ( ; born August 22, 1935) is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E. A. Proulx.
She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards, making her the first woman to receive the prize. Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and was film adaptation 2001 film of the same name. Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning motion picture released in 2005.
Proulx lived in multiple states along the East Coast during her childhood as her father worked his way up through the textile industry. She wrote her first story at the age of 10, while sick with chicken pox. She graduated from Deering High School in Portland, Maine. She briefly attended Colby College, where she met her first husband, H. Ridgely Bullock Jr., and dropped out to marry him in 1955. She later returned to college, studying at the University of Vermont from 1966 to 1969, and graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in History in 1969. She earned her M.A. in history from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, Quebec in 1973. Proulx pursued a PhD at Concordia and passed her oral examinations in 1975, but abandoned her dissertation before completing the degree. In 1999, Concordia awarded her an honorary doctorate.
Proulx lived for more than 30 years in Vermont, has been married and divorced three times, and has three sons and a daughter (Jonathan, Gillis, Morgan, and Sylvia). In 1994, she moved to Bird Cloud, a ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, spending part of the year in northern Newfoundland on a small cove adjacent to L'Anse aux Meadows. As of 2019, Proulx lived in Port Townsend, Washington.
A year later, her science fiction story "All the Pretty Little Horses" appeared in the teen magazine Seventeen in June 1964. She subsequently published stories in Esquire magazine and Gray's Sporting Journal in the late 1970s, as well as how-to manuals for cooking and gardening. Proulx published her first short-story collection, Heart Songs, in 1988 and her first novel, Postcards, in 1992. She was the first woman to receive the PEN/Faulkner Award, which was awarded to Postcards. She was awarded a NEA fellowship and a Guggenheim fellowship in 1992. Her 1993 novel The Shipping News was adapted into a 2001 film. Set in Newfoundland yet written by someone "from away" (not from Newfoundland), the novel stresses the vicarious quality of Proulx' writing.
She had the following comment on her celebrity status:
In 1997, Proulx was awarded the Dos Passos Prize, a mid-career award for American writers. Proulx has twice won the O. Henry Prize for the year's best short story. In 1998, she won for "Brokeback Mountain", which had appeared in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997. Proulx won again the following year for "The Mud Below", which appeared in The New Yorker June 22 and 29, 1999. Both appear in her 1999 collection of short stories, . The lead story in this collection, entitled "The Half-Skinned Steer", was selected by author Garrison Keillor for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 1998, (Proulx herself edited the 1997 edition of this series) and later by novelist John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century (1999).
In 2007, the composer Charles Wuorinen approached Proulx with the idea of turning her short story "Brokeback Mountain" into an opera. The opera of the same name, with a libretto by Proulx herself, premiered January 28, 2014, at the Teatro Real in Madrid. It was praised as an often brilliant adaptation that clearly conveyed the text of the libretto with music that is rich in imagination and variety.William Jeffery, "Brokeback Mountain Opera Receives World Premiere", Limelight Magazine (January 30, 2014).Westphal, Matthew (September 27, 2007). "'Gay 12-Tone Cowboys' - Composer Charles Wuorinen Plans Opera Version of Brokeback Mountain". Playbill. Retrieved October 3, 2013. Proulx published her first non-fiction book, Bird Cloud: A Memoir, largely based on her former Wyoming ranch of the same name. In 2017, she received the Fitzgerald Award for that year for Achievement in American Literature. F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival; accessed March 24, 2022.
Personal life and education
Proulx was born Edna Ann Proulx in Norwich, Connecticut, to Lois Nellie ( Gill) and Georges-Napoléon Proulx. NNDB Her first name honored one of her mother's aunts. She is of English and French-Canadian ancestry.Hennessy, D. M. (2007). Annie Proulx. In R. E. Lee & P. Meanor (Eds.), Dictionary of Literary Biography: Vol. 335. American Short-Story Writers Since World War II. Detroit: Gale.Annie Proulx. (2013). In J. W. Hunter (Ed.), Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 331). Detroit: Gale. Her maternal forebears came to America in 1635, 15 years after the Mayflower arrived.Jukka Petäjä, Maisema on ihmisen kehys ja varjo, Helsingin Sanomat, October 26, 2011, pg. C4.
Writing career and recognition
Starting as a journalist, her first published work of fiction was "The Customs Lounge", a science fiction story published in the September 1963 issue of If, under the byline "E. A. Proulx".
Bibliography
Nonfiction
(1980). 9780882662282, Storey Communications. ISBN 9780882662282
(1983). 9780882662220, Storey Communications. ISBN 9780882662220
(2026). 9781580175203, Storey Communications. ISBN 9781580175203
Essay
Novels
Short fiction
Collections
Stories
Rough deeds 2013 A resolute man 2016
Awards and recognition
"National Book Awards – 1993". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
(With acceptance speech by Proulx and essays by Bob Shacochis and Mark Sarvas from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
"Fiction". Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
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