Discover the Best Books Written by Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.

Robinson is best known for her novels Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead (2004). Her novels are noted for their thematic depiction of faith and rural life. The subjects of her essays span numerous topics, including the relationship between religion and science, US history, nuclear pollution, John Calvin, and contemporary American politics.

Robinson was born Marilynne Summers on November 26, 1943, in Sandpoint, Idaho, the daughter of Eileen (Harris) and John J. Summers, a lumber company employee. Her brother, the art historian David Summers, 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 Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude in 1966, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. 

At Brown, one of her teachers was the celebrated postmodern novelist John Hawkes. She received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in English from the University of Washington in 1977. Robinson has written five highly acclaimed novels: Housekeeping (1980), Gilead (2004), Home (2008), Lila (2014), and Jack (2020). Housekeeping was a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (US), Gilead was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer, and Home received the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction (UK). 

Home and Lila are companions to Gilead and focus on the Boughton and Ames families during the same time period. Robinson is also the author of many non-fiction works, including Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989), The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998), Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010), When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012), The Givenness of Things: Essays (2015), and What Are We Doing Here? (2018). 

She has written numerous articles, essays, and reviews for Harper's, The Paris Review, and The New York Review of Books. On January 24, 2013, Robinson was announced to be among the finalists for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. She won the 2013 Park Kyong-ni Prize.