Donna Louise Tartt was born on December 23, 1963, to Don and Taylor Tartt, inGreenwood, Mississippi.[4][5][6] She was raised in the nearby town ofGrenada.[6] Her father, Don Tartt, was arockabilly musician, turned freeway "service station owner-cum-local politician", while her mother, Taylor, was a secretary.[7][8][9] Her parents were avid readers, and her mother would read while driving.[10] As a child, Tartt memorized "really long poems byA. A. Milne", and has described herself as, "this sort of horrible repository of doggerel verse".[7]
Tartt wrote her first poem in 1968, when she was five years old.[11] She was first published at 13, when a sonnet was included in a 1976 edition of theMississippi Review.[7][12] In high school, she was a freshman cheerleader for the basketball team and worked in the public library.[8][13][14] Tartt's essays about patriotism and alcoholism won prizes,[7] and she also wrote "short stories about death" during this period.[7]
Donna Tartt has spent about ten years writing each of her novels.[23][24]
The Secret History (1992)[25][26] was derived from her time at Bennington College.[20] She spent eight years writing.[27]Amanda Urban was her agent and the novel became a critical and financial success.[28][29] It originated thedark academia literary aesthetic, causing it to "explode like a firework" in the literary scene, according toThe New York Times.[30]
Her 2013 novelThe Goldfinch was a bestseller and received the 2014Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, though some critics felt the novel was juvenile and not literary.[23][37][38] The book was adapted into the movieThe Goldfinch, which was a critical and commercial failure.[39][40] Tartt was not given the option to write the screenplay or act as a producer for the film, and reportedly fired longtime agentAmanda Urban over the deal.[41]
In November 2023,The Queen's Reading Room released an interview with Donna Tartt who confirmed that she was working on her next novel.[42]
In 2002, it was reported that Tartt had lived inGreenwich Village, theUpper East Side,[43] and on a farm nearCharlottesville, Virginia.[44] Tartt is 5 feet (1.5 m) tall.[45] She has also stated that she would never get married.[46] In a 2013 interview withThe Irish Independent, Tartt stated that she dislikes going on book tours and giving talks, because she finds them mentally exhausting. She stressed that she was not a recluse but rather was maintaining her privacy, and asked rhetorically, "Was itEmerson who talked about the great freedom of American life as the freedom not to participate in the life of the culture, the freedom to shut the door, to close the curtains?"[24]
In 2016, Tartt's cousin, police officer James Lee Tartt, was killed while on duty.[47]
As of 2016,Virginia Living published that Tartt lived with art gallery owner Neal Guma in Charlottesville, Virginia, on a property they purchased together in 1997.[48] Tartt also dedicated her second novel to someone named Neal, although she did not elaborate on his identity.
Tartt is a convert toCatholicism and contributed an essay, "The Spirit and Writing in a Secular World", toThe Novel, Spirituality and Modern Culture (2000), edited byPaul Fiddes. In her essay she wrote that "faith is vital in the process of making my work and in the reasons I am driven to make it."[49] However, Tartt also warned of the danger of writers who impose their beliefs or convictions on their novels. She wrote that writers should "shy from asserting those convictions directly in their work."[49][7]
"Sleepytown: A Southern Gothic Childhood, with Codeine",Harper's Magazine 285.1706, July 1992, pp. 60–66
Tartt's great-grandfather gave the five-year-old, for tonsillitis, whiskey, and codeine cough syrup, for two years, when kept home due to tonsillitis, she would read and write poetry.[56]
"Basketball Season" inThe Best American Sports Writing, edited and with an introduction by Frank Deford, Houghton Mifflin, 1993
"Team Spirit: Memories of Being a Freshman Cheerleader for the Basketball Team",Harper's Magazine 288.1727, April 1994, pp. 37–40
