Bio

Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt is a novelist, essayist and critic. Her first novel, The Secret History, was a bestseller and has been published in twenty-three languages. A paperback version of her latest novel, The Little Friend, [became] available in October 2003. The Little Friend won the WHSmith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
- Bloomsbury

1963

• Born December 23, 1963
  
• Birthplace: Greenwood, Mississippi
  
• Mother: Taylor Tartt
  
• Father: Don Tartt
  
• Siblings: 1 Sister
  
• Raised: Grenada, Mississippi

1968

• Wrote First Poem: Age 5

1976

• Published First Sonnet: Age 13, Mississippi Literary Review

1981

• Enters college at University of Mississippi, Oxford
  
• Famous First words from Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, Willie Morris, to Donna Tartt: "My name is Willie Morris, and I think You're a genius."
  
• Willie Morris recommends Donna Tartt to Barry Hannah (Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence) for his graduate short story course
  
• Barry Hannah says she outperforms the graduate students

1982

• Barry and Willie encourage Donna to transfer to Bennington College, a small liberal arts college in Vermont
  
• Donna meets the writers Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt

1984

• Donna begins writing The Secret History during her second year at Bennington College

1986

• Donna graduates from Bennington College

1989

• Ellis recommends Donna to the famous literary agent, Amanda "Binky" Urban
  
• Urban accepts her unsigned

1991

• Two years later Urban starts a bidding war for the 866 page manuscript
  
• Knopf wins - paying $450,000 for rights

1992

• Knopf orders 75,000 for first printing. (The usual for a first novel is 10,000.)
  
• Storm of publicity surrounding Donna Tartt and her first novel. She is a celebrity before it has a chance to hit the shelves
  
• Knopf has to order additional printings to keep up with demand
  
• The Secret History is on the Publishers Weekly Bestseller List for 13 weeks. It reaches as high as #2
  
• Movie rights to The Secret History sold to the late Alan J. Pakula

2001

• Second Novel: tentatively titled, "Tribulation"
  
• Residence: New York
  
• Pets: 3 Dogs
  
• Relationship Status: Boyfriend

2002

• Publication of "The Little Friend", October 2002
  

2003

• She has started another novel.
  

2004

• Tartt is working on a novella based on the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus - young writer shoots to fame and melts her wings? - for the Scottish publisher Canongate, due out late 2004.
  

Tartt, Donna (CATEGORY: LITERATURE)
(b. circa 1964) Diminutive novelist whose debut, The Secret History (1992), garnered as much attention for its advance (with foreign rights, an estimated $950,000) as for its literary merits. (Such was the promotional effort and media attention bestowed upon Tartt that Newsweek ran a story called "Anatomy of a Hype.") Bennington College, where Tartt was a classmate of early bloomer Brett Easton Ellis, served as the unnamed Northeast campus for this collegiate gothic steeped in classicist mumbo-jumbo. Ostensibly about a cliquish murder among Greek scholars--Lord of the Flies interleaved with The Bacchae--Secret History was really a case study in stultifying pretension, with occasional moments of genuine emotion buried under layers of gratuitous allusion and stilted dialogue. While working on her second novel, Tartt published several pieces of writing, including an essay on basketball in a sports writing collection and a short story in The New Yorker.
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AltCulture

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The Secret History Donna Tartt audio cassette

The Little Friend Donna Tartt audio cd (abridged) audio cassette (unabridged)

Donna Tartt's The Secret History: A Reader's Guide Tracy Hargreaves

Best of the Oxford American: Ten Years from the Southern Magazine of Good Writing edited by Mark Smirnoff

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