TILLIE OLSON
Tillie
Olson is the highly praised author of Tell Me a Riddle, Silences,
and Yonnondio. She is a Nebraska native (born in 1912 or 1913) who began
writing in the 1930s. The necessity of raising and supporting four children
through "everyday jobs" silenced her for twenty years. Public
libraries were her college. Among the colleges where she has taught or been
writer-in-residence are Amherst College, Stanford University, MIT, and Kenyon
College. She is the recipient of five honorary degrees, National Endowment for
the Arts fellowships, the O. Henry Award for best short story, and a Guggenheim
Fellowship. Her Afterword to Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills
is a moving account of her commitment to labor issues and feminist values.
Regarded as one of the earliest spokesperson's for the women's movement, she has
said, "Be critical. Women have the right to say: This is surface, this
falsifies reality, this degrades." She was raised in the Russian Jewish and
Socialist community in Omaha and now lives in Berkeley.