Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt was born Donna Louise Tartt on December 23, 1963, in Greenwood, Mississippi. She attended the University of Mississippi before transferring to Bennington College, where she studied classics and philosophy and graduated in 1986, befriending future authors including Bret Easton Ellis. Her debut novel The Secret History (1992) popularised the dark academia genre. Tartt's career is marked by her meticulous novels, each taking approximately a decade to write, influenced by authors including Evelyn Waugh, Vladimir Nabokov, and Patricia Highsmith. The Little Friend (2002) followed, and then The Goldfinch (2013)—a bestseller about a boy who survives a terrorist attack and escapes with a famous Dutch painting—won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A 2019 film adaptation starred Nicole Kidman and Ansel Elgort. Tartt lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.