ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ann Patchett

American author Ann Patchett was born and raised in Los Angeles until she was six and then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband Karl and their dog Sparky. Ann recalls a happy childhood, but says, “I don’t think anyone else in my family was”, which has proved perfect fodder for her novels. Ann says she “can’t remember not wanting to be a writer” and studied creative writing in New York and Iowa. Commonwealth is her seventh novel and she has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction three times, winning in 2002 with the novel Bel Canto, which also won her the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. The secret to her success, she says, is that she’s “good at plot. I like to tell stories and have them come to a meaningful conclusion. I don’t think that’s necessarily the secret of a great novel, but it’s the secret of a great Ann Patchett novel.”