Born: 1973
Ohio connection: Birth
Cleveland
Anthony Doerr, also known as Tony Doerr, was born in Cleveland, Ohio. In high school, he developed an interest in writing, and by the time he was in his mid-twenties, Doerr was submitting his work to magazines for publication. Although his mother was a high school science teacher who encouraged family interest in science, Doerr, who writes a lot about science and the environment, did not pursue formal education in science. He obtained a B.A. in history at Bowdoin College in 1995 and an M.F.A. in writing at Bowling Green State University in 1999. After that, he taught at various institutions, including the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Boise State University, and Princeton University. Anthony Doerr is an award-winning writer whose work has been translated into forty languages.
Doerr’s first book, The Shell Collector (2002), brought together the stories he’d published in magazines. Next came the novel, About Grace (2004), which won the 2005 Ohioana Book Award. In 2007 Doerr published the memoir, Four Seasons in Rome, and in 2010 he published Memory Wall, a short story collection, which won the 2011 Ohioana Book Award. Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See was published in 2014 and won many accolades and awards, including the 2015 Pulitzer Prize and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His essays and short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, New American Stories, The Best American Essays, and many others.
Anthony Doerr has lived in Africa, Rome, and New Zealand and currently resides in Boise, Idaho.
Awards:
O. Henry Award, Doubleday, 2002, for the short story “The Hunter’s Wife”; O. Henry Award, Doubleday, 2003, for the short story “The Shell Collector”; Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, The Rome Prize, The Ohioana Book Award, Young Lion Award, New York Public Library, 2003, New York Times Notable Book, and an American Library Association Book of the Year, all for The Shell Collector: Stories; Named one of 21 Best American Novelists, Granta magazine, 2007; O. Henry Award, Doubleday, 2008, for the short story “Village 113”; 2015 Pulitzer Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for the novel All the Light We Cannot See.