Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett is an American novelist and independent bookshop owner, whose works include State of Wonder and the multi-award winning Bel Canto. Prior to writing her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, in 1992, Patchett had had a number of pieces published in magazines and journals such as The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine and Vogue. She was also a staff writer on the teen magazine, Seventeen, for nine years. Despite critical accolades, mainstream success eluded Patchett until 2001’s Bel Canto, a character study of a group of young terrorists and their hostages during a siege in a fictional South American country. Bel Canto won the Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize for Fiction) and the PEN/Faulkner Award for American fiction and raised Patchett’s profile dramatically. In 2010 she co-founded Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee and has been a vocal campaigner for independent bookshops ever since. Her latest novel, The Dutch House, will be published in September 2019.