Anthony Doerr is an American author of short stories and novels. He is most well known for his 2014 novel, All the Light We Cannot See. Anthony was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where his mother, a science teacher, encouraged him and his siblings to explore the natural world.
At sixteen, he began keeping a daily journal, and at nineteen, when he went to Kenya, his entries became much longer. He attended the nearby University School, graduating in 1991, and then majored in history at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, graduating in 1995. In college, he studied a wide range of topics. He says, “Science, English, Literature—they are all just ways of asking, ‘What does it mean to be here?’” He notes that he got a history degree probably because he was too shy to admit he wanted to be a writer.
At age twenty-three, he travelled with friends to New Zealand and began writing stories and decided to pursue creative writing. While attending Bowling Green State University to earn his MFA, he began trying to get published. His first book, a collection of short stories called The Shell Collector, was published in 2002. His first novel, About Grace, was released in 2004, followed by his memoir Four Seasons in Rome.
His second novel, All the Light We Cannot See, became a bestseller and won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It was also a runner-up for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and won the 2015 Ohioana Library Association Book Award for Fiction.
Anthony’s works have been translated into forty different languages and have won numerous prestigious awards. He currently lives in Boise, Idaho with his family.
