American novelist and short-story writer, whose keen ear for dialogue and life-like characters have won critical acclaim. Several of Tyler's novels focus on loneliness, isolation, human interactions of eccentric middle-class people living in disunited families. Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but grew up in North Carolina, as the daughter of an industrial chemist and social worker. The family lived among various Quaker communities in the rural south before settling in Raleigh, North Carolina. At the age of 19 Tyler graduated from Duke University, Raleigh, where she won the Anne Flexner Award for