In 1981, Tartt enrolled in the University of Mississippi where her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. In high school, Tartt was a freshman cheerleader for the basketball team and worked in the public library. In 1976, aged thirteen, Tartt was published for the first time when a sonnet was included in The Mississippi Review. In 1968, aged five, Tartt wrote her first poem. I'm sort of this horrible repository of doggerel verse. I also know all these things that I was made to learn. I know a ton of poetry by heart, When I was a little kid, first thing I memorized were really long poems by A. Her parents were avid readers, and her mother would read while driving. Her father, Don Tartt, was a rockabilly musician, turned freeway 'service station owner-cum-local politician', while her mother, Taylor, was a secretary. She was raised in the nearby town of Grenada. Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, the elder of two daughters. Her work has been widely critically-acclaimed, and her novel The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and has been adapted into a film. Donna Tartt's three novels in German, published by Goldmann.ĭonna Louise Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American novelist and essayist.

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt