Canongate has acquired The Writing Life, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard’s perennial guide to the creative process. UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) were acquired from Rachel Clements at Abner Stein. First published in 1989, the volume will be available in paperback and ebook on the publisher’s Canons list in January 2026. The Writing Life joins other books in the Canons such as Olivia Laing’s The Trip to Echo Spring, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. The Canons are books without boundaries. Some are classics already, the rest will be soon.
Lauded by the New York Times Book Review as ‘full of joys’ and the Irish Times as ‘a genuine source of pleasure’, the volume wrestles with the hubris and insanity of the creative process. In its pages, Annie Dillard offers up her own trials in the pursuit of inspiration: the absurdity, the fierce determination and the sacrifices (warm feet; gainful employment; peace of mind).
Annie Dillard was born in 1945 in Pennsylvania. She is a much-celebrated poet, novelist and essayist and author of thirteen books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal for her work deepening the understanding of the human experience.
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