Edna Annie Proulx was born in Norwich, Connecticut on August 22, 1935. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1969 and earned an M. A. from Sir George Williams University in Montreal in 1973. She was a journalist, wrote nonfiction articles for numerous publications, and was the author of several "how-to" books before beginning to write fiction in her 50s. She became the first woman to win the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, for her debut novel Postcards. Her novel The Shipping News won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award in 1994. Accordion Crimes, published in 1996, won the Dos Passos Prize for literature. She also won the O. Henry prize for the year's best short story twice; in 1998 for Brokeback Mountain and in 1999 for The Mud Below. She has written more than 50 articles and stories for periodicals and edited Best American Short Stories of 1997.