American · b. 1963
Ann Patchett won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for "Bel Canto," a novel about hostages and terrorists finding common humanity through opera during a siege. The American author writes novels of circumstance—strangers thrown together by accident or crisis—and explores how connection forms in extremity. Patchett also owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, championing independent bookselling with the same conviction she brings to fiction.