Background
Olsen, Tillie was born on January 14, 1912 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Daughter of Samuel and Ida (Beber) Lerner.
( Yonnondio follows the heartbreaking path of the Holbroo...)
Yonnondio follows the heartbreaking path of the Holbrook family in the late 1920s and the Great Depression as they move from the coal mines of Wyoming to a tenant farm in western Nebraska, ending up finally on the kill floors of the slaughterhouses and in the wretched neighborhoods of the poor in Omaha, Nebraska. Mazie, the oldest daughter in the growing family of Jim and Anna Holbrook, tells the story of the family's desire for a better life – Anna's dream that her children be educated and Jim's wish for a life lived out in the open, away from the darkness and danger of the mines. At every turn in their journey, however, their dreams are frustrated, and the family is jeopardized by cruel and indifferent systems.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080328621X/?tag=2022091-20
( A century after her birth, Tillie Olsen’s writing is as...)
A century after her birth, Tillie Olsen’s writing is as relevant as when it first appeared; indeed, the clarity and passion of her vision and style have, if anything, become even more striking over time. Collected here for the first time are several of Olsen’s nonfiction pieces about the 1930s, early journalism pieces, and short fiction, including the four beautifully crafted, highly celebrated stories originally published as Tell Me a Riddle: “I Stand Here Ironing,” “Hey Sailor, What Ship?,” “O Yes,” and “Tell Me a Riddle.” Also included, for the first time since it appeared in the 1971 Best American Short Stories, is “Requa I.” In these stories, as in all of her work, Olsen set a new standard for the treatment of women and the poor and for the depiction of their lives and circumstances. In her hands, the hard truths about motherhood and marriage, domestic life, labor, and political conviction found expression in language of such poetic intensity and depth that its influence continues to be felt today. An introduction by Olsen’s granddaughter, the poet Rebekah Edwards, and a foreword by her daughter Laurie Olsen provide a personal and generational context for the author’s work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803245777/?tag=2022091-20
( Masters of short fiction illumine questions of pain, su...)
Masters of short fiction illumine questions of pain, suffering, medicine, fate, and, most starkly, “Why am I dying?” Circling in psychological time, Tillie Olsen depicts the death of a working-class grandmother, a past proletarian revolutionary in Russia, and how her death devastates her family in mid-twentieth-century America. Leo Tolstoy’s cancer-ravaged Czarist bureaucrat weighs his life, searching for semblances of meaning in a linear, realistic story.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558615369/?tag=2022091-20
Olsen, Tillie was born on January 14, 1912 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Daughter of Samuel and Ida (Beber) Lerner.
Doctor of Letters (honorary), University Nebraska, 1979. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Knox College, 1982. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Hobart and William Smith College, 1984.
Doctor of Letters (honorary), Clark University, 1985. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Albright College, 1986. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Wooster College, 1991.
Doctor of Letters (honorary), Mills College, 1995. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Amherst College, 1998.
Writer-in-residence, Amherst College, 1969-1970; visiting faculty, Stanford University, 1972; Writer-in-residence, visiting faculty English, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1973-1974; Writer-in-residence, visiting faculty English, U. Massachusetts, Boston, 1974; international visiting scholar, Norway, 1980; Hill professor, University of Minnesota, spring 1986; writer-in-residence, Kenyon College, since 1987. Regents lecturer University of California at San Diego, since 1977, University of California at Los Angeles, 1987. Commencement speaker English department University of California, Berkeley, 1983, Hobart and William Smith College, 1984 Bennington College, 1986.
( Masters of short fiction illumine questions of pain, su...)
( Yonnondio follows the heartbreaking path of the Holbroo...)
( A century after her birth, Tillie Olsen’s writing is as...)
(Pillars of American literature, these two newly repackage...)
(Yonnondio From The Thirties, by Olsen, Tillie)
President women's auxiliary California Chief Information Officer, 1941-1943, director war relief, 1944-1945. Member Authors Guild, Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Writers Union.
Married Jack Olsen; children: Karla, Julie, Kathie, Laurie.