Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson at the 2012 Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College.
Born	(1943-11-26) November 26, 1943 (age 73) Sandpoint, Idaho, United States
Occupation	Novelist, essayist
Nationality	American
Notable works	Housekeeping (1980) Gilead (2004) Home (2008) Lila (2014)
Notable awards	Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award (1981) National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2004, 2014) Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2005) Orange Prize for Fiction (2009) National Humanities Medal (2012) Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction (2016)

Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. During her writing career Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, the 2012 National Humanities Medal, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016 Robinson was named to Time Magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop since 1991, and plans to retire in the spring of 2016.

A prolific writer, Robinson is best known for her novels Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead (2004). Her novels are noted for both their mid-20th century American Midwest setting as well as their thematic depiction of rural life and faith. The subjects of her essays have spanned numerous topics, including the relationship between religion and science, nuclear pollution, John Calvin, and contemporary American politics.

Robinson (née Summers) was born and grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho. Her brother is the art historian David Summers, who dedicated his book Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting to her. She did her undergraduate work at Pembroke College, the former women's college at Brown University, receiving her B.A., magna cum laude in 1966, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977.