Birds Around Us ENGL 133w - Resource Guide

Annie Dillard occupies an unusual place in contemporary American literature. Through her work in a variety of genres, she consistently affirms the spiritual dimension of existence as it is manifested through the natural world.

Biographical and analysis of her long fiction and a bibliography of works about her.

Poet, novelist and nonfiction writer Annie Dillard's writing is often categorized as ecotheological, and she is best known for her three classic naturalist books: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), Holy the Firm (1977), and Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982).

Dillard startled critics with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. Viewed by many as a naturalist who brilliantly revealed nature's fecundity and violence, Dillard was compared to writers as disparate as Thoreau and Melville. Nature is not her real focus, however. She says of her work, "Art is my interest, mysticism my message, Christian mysticism."

In her Pulitzer Prize–winning essay collection Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), she distilled from keen observations of her own habitat the essential enigmas of religious mysticism.

Annie Dillard's contributions to life writing include her own autobiographies, critical commentary on autobiography, and an anthology of autobiographical works she co-edited. Dillard's reticent “I”, evident in her autobiographies and near-autobiographies, subverts the preoccupation with “self” that autobiographies typically demonstrate.

Reference article with critical information from Masterplots.

Full text, peer reviewed articles about Annie Dillard.

The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association
Vol. 51, No. 2 (FALL 2018), pp. 169-182 (14 pages)

New England Review (1990-)
Vol. 36, No. 4 (2015), pp. 27-32 (6 pages)
Dillard is mentioned, but primarily about birds.

American Literature
Vol. 59, No. 1 (Mar., 1987), pp. 71-84 (14 pages)

The author outlines thirteen specific lessons imparted by her experience as a student in a class devoted to photographing elements of the natural world and creating images suitable for scientific presentation, and then she explains how she adapted the principles from Scientific Imaging for use in a creative nonfiction class focusing on nature writing.

Includes a page on Scholarly work on Annie Dillard.

Available for request for Columbia College faculty, staff, and student in Missouri.