"Snow"

Ann Beattie
(1947– )

Ann Beattie was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in the nearby suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland, where she was, by her own admission, something of a rebel. She earned a B.A. from American University in 1969 and an M.A. in English from the University of Connecticut in 1970, where she remained until 1972 to teach and do additional graduate work. Beattie published her first short story, "A Rose for Judy Garland's Casket," in the Western Humanities Review in 1972. Since that date, her stories have appeared in Canto, The New York Times Magazine, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Carolina Quarterly, Tri-Quarterly, Fiction, Atlantic Monthly, the Texas Quarterly, and, most frequently, The New Yorker. These stories have been brought together in several collections: Distortions (1976), Secrets and Surprises (1979), The Burning House (1982), Where You'll Find Me (1986), What Was Mine (1991), Park City: New and Selected Stories (1998), and Perfect Recall (2001). She has also published seven novels, Chilly Scenes of Winter (1976), subsequently made into a film; Falling in Place (1980); Love Always (1985); Picturing Will (1989); Another You (1995); My Life, Starring Dara Falcon (1997); and The Doctor's House (2002).

Beattie has taught English and creative writing at both Harvard University and the University of Virginia. Beattie's fiction has been praised for its stylistic excellence, particularly her use of detail and dialogue. As critic Robert Towers has observed (1980), Beattie "has become perhaps our most authoritative translator-transcriber of the speech-patterns, nonverbal communications, rituals, and tribal customs of those members (white, largely middle-class) of a generation who came of age around 1970—who attended or dropped out of college, smoked dope, missed connections, lived communally, and drifted in and out of relationships with a minimum of self-recognized affect or commitment."

Ploughshares, The Literary Journal

Ploughshares (literary journal of Emerson college) site about Ann Beattie's works published in Ploughshares, including a guest editorial by the author and reviews of her books.

New York State Writers Institute - Joyce Carol Oates

New York State Writers Institute Ann Beattie page has a brief biography, quotes from other writers about her work, and photos of some of her book covers.