Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott is one of the most quoted writing teachers in America. Her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life has been in print since 1994 and has guided more than a million writers through the swamp of first drafts, second-guessing, and getting unstuck. The title comes from her father, also a writer, talking her older brother through a panicked book report on birds: "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

Born in San Francisco in 1954, Lamott began writing seriously after her father was diagnosed with brain cancer. The short pieces she wrote about the family's experience became her first novel, Hard Laughter, published in 1980. Three more novels followed through the 1980s. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985 and has worked as a book reviewer for Mademoiselle, a restaurant critic for California Magazine, an NPR commentator, and a Salon columnist.

Her nonfiction is where she became a household name. Operating Instructions (1993) chronicled her son's first year as a single parent. Traveling Mercies (1999), Plan B (2005), and Grace (Eventually) (2007) collected her essays on faith, written from the angle of a recovering alcoholic Christian who refuses to clean herself up for the page. Help, Thanks, Wow (2012), Stitches (2013), Small Victories (2014), Hallelujah Anyway (2017), Almost Everything (2018), Dusk, Night, Dawn (2021), and Somehow (2024) followed.

She has written seven novels in all, including Crooked Little Heart, Blue Shoe, and Imperfect Birds. Her most recent book, Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, was co-written with her husband Neal Allen. She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame and continues to live and write in Northern California.