An Evening with Novelist Ann Patchett

On Friday, May 18, at 7:30 pm, Washington National Cathedral joins the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to present a reading by acclaimed author Ann Patchett. The PEN/Faulkner Foundation brings together American writers and readers in a wide variety of programs to promote a love of literature.

Patchett's most most recent bestselling book (State of Wonder) is a tale of morality and miracles, science and sacrifice, set in the Amazonian jungle.

About Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett was born in Los Angeles and raised in Nashville. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 1990, she won a residential fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars. It was named a New York Times Notable Book for 1992. Patchett’s second novel, Taft, was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best work of fiction. Her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, was short-listed for England’s Orange Prize and earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Bel Canto won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in 2002 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was named the Book Sense Book of the Year. It sold more than a million copies in the United States and has been translated into 30 languages. In 2004, Patchett published Truth & Beauty, a memoir of her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy. It was named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Entertainment Weekly. Her fourth novel, Run, was a New York Times bestseller. Patchett’s current book, New York Times bestseller State of Wonder, will be published in paperback in May 2012.

“Patchett exhibits an extraordinary ability to bring the horrors and the wonders of the Amazon jungle to life” —Kirkus Reviews on State of Wonder