The Shipping News

Surprising transformations take place when a third-rate newspaperman and his two daughters decide to move back to their family home on the coast of Newfoundland with the help of a colorful cast of locals, set out to reclaim their lives. (A Miramax film, directed by Lass Hallstr÷m, releasing December 25, 2001, starring Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, & Judi Dench.) (General Fiction)

Annie Proulx lives in Wyoming, but spends much of the year traveling North America. She has held NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships and residences at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Her short story collection, Heart Songs and Other Stories, appeared in 1988, followed in 1992 by Postcards, which won the 1993 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize, Annie Proulx has published the novels The Shipping News in 1993 and Accordion Crimes in 1996. Her most recent work, Close Range, a book of short stories set in Wyoming, appeared in 1999.