American · b. 1943
Marilynne Robinson writes about grace in an ungracious age. "Gilead" (2004) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—a dying minister in Iowa writes letters to his young son, meditating on faith, family, and American history. "Home" (2008) and "Lila" (2014) return to the same town from other perspectives; "Jack" (2020) completes the quartet. "Housekeeping" (1980), her first novel, tracks two sisters raised by their drifting aunt in the Pacific Northwest. Robinson's prose moves slowly and earns every revelation. Her essays on theology and politics match her fiction's moral seriousness.