Anne Lamott writes and speaks about subjects that begin with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus. But armed with self-effacing humor — she is laugh out-loud funny — and ruthless honesty, Lamott converts her subjects into enchantment. Actually, she writes about what most of us don’t like to think about. She wrote her first novel for her father, the writer Kenneth Lamott, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer. She has said that the book was “a present to someone I loved who was going to die.”

In all her novels, Lamott writes about loss — loss of loved ones and loss of personal control. She doesn’t try to sugar-coat the sadness, frustration and disappointment, but tells her stories with honesty, compassion and a pureness of voice. She says, “I have a lot of hope and a lot of faith and I struggle to communicate that.” In her books and in person, she testifies to her faith, lifting us, comforting us, inspiring us, and keeping us laughing.

Lamott is the author of six novels as well as four best-selling books of non-fiction, which range in topics of a single motherhood, writing and living a writer's life, and autobiographical essays on faith. Anne Lamott has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has taught at U.C. Davis, as well as at writing conferences across the country. Lamott’s biweekly Salon Magazine “online diary” Word by Word was voted The Best of the Web by Time magazine. Filmmaker Freida Mock (who won an Academy Award for her documentary on Maya Lin) has made a documentary on Anne Lamott, “Bird by Bird with Annie”, in 1999.

Read For:

  • Expert cartography of the Christian faith
  • Inspirational writing with large doses of humor
  • Everyday spirituality come to life