Ann Beattie was born on September 8, 1947. She is an American novelist and short story writer. She has won awards for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in writing short stories.

Career

Alice Beattie was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Chevy Chase, Washington, D.C. She attended Woodrow Wilson High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree from American University and a master’s degree from the University of Connecticut.

In the early 1970s, Beattie began publishing short stories in magazines such as The Western Humanities Review, Ninth Letter, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. One of her stories, "The Cinderella Waltz," was included in The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction in 1998. In 1976, she published her first book of short stories, Distortions, and her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, which was later adapted into a film.

Over time, Beattie’s writing style changed. In 1998, she released a collection of short stories titled Park City, which included both older and newer works. Christopher Lehman-Haupt of The New York Times wrote that the stories are arranged in order of when they were written, showing how her writing techniques developed. He noted that her early stories focused on characters who felt disconnected from society, while her later stories showed more emotional depth and less moral hesitation.

Beattie has taught at Harvard College and the University of Connecticut. She was also associated with the University of Virginia, where she began as a part-time lecturer in 1980. In 2000, she became the Edgar Allan Poe Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing and remained at the university until 2013, when she left due to disagreements with the university’s direction. In 2005, she was chosen as the winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story, an honor recognizing her achievements in writing short stories.

Beattie’s first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter (1976), was made into a film titled Chilly Scenes of Winter or Head Over Heels in 1979. The film, directed by Joan Micklin Silver and starring John Heard, Mary Beth Hurt, Gloria Grahame, and Peter Riegert, was not well received at first. However, when it was re-released in 1982 with a new title and ending that matched the book, it became popular and is now considered a cult classic. In 2004, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Recent works

Appraisal of Beattie's recent work has been mixed. In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani described her novel Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life (2011) as "unrealistic," "self-centered," and "overly indulgent." She called it "a pretentious book that makes people dislike academics." In The Washington Post, Marie Arana, the Book World Editor, said the book was "a misleading product" with "no clear story." She noted the book was "not really about Mrs. Nixon, but instead focused on many writers shown for show." Arana wrote, "The book is not, except in the most basic way, about Mrs. Nixon. It is about Beattie." William Deresiewicz, writing in The Nation, said the book "does not succeed." He described its "haphazard style" as "tiring" and wrote that "nothing ever really begins. Readers feel as if Beattie spent the whole book just preparing to speak. Her subject often seems like a way to start a conversation, not the real focus." In contrast, Dawn Raffel, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, called the book "cleverly complex" and "at times… beautifully poetic." She said, "Nothing in Mrs. Nixon is perfectly clear, and that is what makes it powerful."

Mary Pols described Beattie's short-story collection The State We're In (2015), set in Maine, as "slippery" and "strange" in The New York Times Book Review. She wrote, "I read this collection twice trying to understand what else, besides Maine, connects these stories that feel incomplete."

In a review of Beattie's collection The Accomplished Guest (2017) for The Washington Post, Howard Norman praised Beattie for her "charming originality" and said she is "one of our few modern experts at telling stories." He wrote, "When I read Beattie's stories, I think of Chekhov's; when I read Chekhov's stories, I think of Beattie's. Both are writers who will be remembered for a long time."

Regarding Beattie's novel A Wonderful Stroke of Luck (2019), Publishers Weekly wrote, "Beattie provides sharp insights into people's minds and well-written sentences, but the novel lacks the strength and emotional depth of her best work." In The New York Times Book Review, Martha Southgate said, "Ultimately, this is a novel in which nothing seems to matter much." She also called the book "shapeless." However, she praised A Wonderful Stroke of Luck for "some beautifully written sentences and sharp observations that remind readers of Beattie at her best."

Beattie's papers are kept at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

Personal life

Beattie married the writer David Gates. They divorced in 1980. In 1985, she met the painter Lincoln Perry. They married in 1998.

Beattie and Perry both taught at the University of Virginia until 2013. After that, they moved to Key West, Florida, together. Beattie continues to write there.

In 2005, Beattie and Perry worked together on a published collection of Perry's paintings. The book is named Lincoln Perry's Charlottesville. It includes an introductory essay and an artist interview written by Beattie.