Audrey Niffenegger is a writer and visual artist who lives in Chicago. She
is a full time professor in the Interdisciplinary Book Arts MFA Program at the
Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, where she teaches
writing, letterpress printing, and fine edition book production. Her
amusements include collecting taxidermy and reading comic books. Miss
Niffenegger spent her youth hiding in her bedroom and painting her fingernails
black while listening to Patti Smith and Gang of Four, but she is feeling
better now, thanks.
The Time Traveler's Wife is her first novel.
In her own words:
"I'm 39 years old, and I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, which is the
first suburb north of Chicago. I'm a spinster (albeit a spinster with a
permanent boyfriend) and I live in a white stucco bungalow with my cats,
Muybridge and Claudine. I've been writing since I was a tiny child, and I
always made pictures to go with the words.
I have received lots of help from Ragdale Foundation; I have been a Ragdale
Fellow nine times. The Time Traveler's Wife was also supported by the
Illinois Arts Council, which gave me a Fellowship in Prose in 2000. I got my
MFA from Northwestern University in 1991, and my BFA from the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago in 1985."
My writing has been published in Bust, The Magnetic Poetry Book of
Poetry, and Electronic Book Review. My art is in the collections of the
Newberry Library, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Library of
Congress, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and Temple University,
among others.
I wanted to write a book about waiting.
The Time Traveler's Wife is dedicated to my maternal grandparents,
Elizabeth and Norbert Tamandl. My grandfather died very young, and very
suddenly, of a brain tumor. I never met him. My grandmother never remarried.
By all accounts, my grandparents were very happy together. My grandmother
outlived her husband by almost thirty years.
I wanted to write about a perfect marriage that is tested by something
outside the control of the couple. The title came to me out of the blue, and
from the title sprang the characters, and from the characters came the story.
Previous Publications and Awards
Visual Books
The Adventuress and The Three Incestuous Sisters: novel-length visual
books
The Spinster, The Murderer, Spring, and The Aberrant Abecedarium
Short Stories / Illustrations
Prudence: A Cautionary Tale for Picky Eaters (Sherwin Beach Press)
Honors, Citations and Prizes
Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Prose, 2000
Artist's Grant, 1991, Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Brooklyn, NY
Union League Art Scholarship, 1991
Union League Civic and Arts Foundation, Chicago, IL
George D. and Isabella A.Brown Traveling Fellowship, 1985
Artist's Grant, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
This biography was last updated on 09/01/2003.
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