Tyler, Anne (1941– )

US novelist. One of America's most highly-acclaimed writers, she won the Pulitzer Prize with Breathing Lessons (1989; filmed 1994), and has written numerous short stories and novels including Earthly Possessions (1977; filmed 1999), Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), and The Accidental Tourist (1985; filmed 1988).

Her novels are often set in Baltimore, Maryland, where she settled in 1967, and include themes of family, relationships, and isolation. Later novels include Saint Maybe (1991), Ladder of Years (1995), A Patchwork Planet (1998), Back When We Were Grownups (2001), The Amateur Marriage (2003), and Digging to America (2006).

Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1961 she studied at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, and read Russian studies 1961–62 at Columbia University, New York. She worked as a Russian bibliographer at Duke 1962–63, and as a library assistant at McGill University, Montréal, Canada 1964–65. She began to write at university, but it was only when she settled in Baltimore that she concentrated on her writing.