Personal Life
In 1975, she and Richard Dillard divorced amicably, and she moved from Roanoke to Lummi Island near Bellingham, Washington. She taught at Western Washington University part-time as a writer-in-residence. She later married Gary Clevidence, an anthropology professor at WWU's Fairhaven College, and they have a daughter, Cody Rose. For over two decades, she has been married to the historical biographer Robert D. Richardson, whom she met after sending him a fan letter about his book Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind.
Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut. After college Dillard says she became "spiritually promiscuous". Her first prose book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, makes references not only to Christ and the Bible, but also to Judaism, Buddhism, Sufism, and Inuit spirituality. Dillard converted to Roman Catholicism, and in 1994 won the Campion Award, given to a Catholic writer every year by the editors of America. However, her personal website lists her religion as "none."
Her website sells her paintings to benefit a charity called Partners in Health. Dr. Paul Farmer founded the charity to rid the world of infectious disease.
Read more about this topic: Annie Dillard
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox!”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)