Annie Proulx was born in Norwich, Connecticut. She studied history, earning a B.A. at the University of Vermont in 1969 and an M.A. at Sir George Williams University in Montreal in 1973. She lived for many years in Vermont and moved to a ranch in Wyoming in 1994.
Her first novel, Postcards (1992), won the PEN/Faulkner Award. The Shipping News (1993) won the National Book Award and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She also wrote Accordion Crimes, Barkskins and the Wyoming story collections, including Close Range.