Anne Tyler, born on October 25, 1941, is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, with some of her notable works including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989.

She has been honored with several awards including the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012, she received The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020.

Anne Tyler is celebrated for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail", her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language". She has often been compared to other literary giants like John Updike, Jane Austen, and Eudora Welty.

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at the young age of nineteen from Duke University and pursued graduate studies in Russian at Columbia University.