Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, the elder of two daughters. She was raised in the nearby town of Grenada. Her father, Don Tartt, was a rockabilly musician, turned freeway "service station owner-cum-local politician", while her mother, Taylor, was a secretary.[5][6][7] Her parents were avid readers, and her mother would read while driving.[8]
I know a ton of poetry by heart, When I was a little kid, first thing I memorized were really long poems by A. A. Milne ... I also know all these things that I was made to learn. I'm sort of this horrible repository of doggerel verse.[5]
In 1968, aged five, Tartt wrote her first poem.[9] In 1976, aged thirteen, she was published for the first time when a sonnet was included in the Mississippi Review.[5][10] In high school, she was a freshman cheerleader for the basketball team and worked in the public library.[6][11][12]
Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Misswriter-in-residence, admitted the eighteen-year-old Tartt into his graduate course on the short story. "She was deeply literary", said Hannah. "Just a rare genius, really. A literary star."[17]
The Secret History (1992)[20][21] was derived from her time at Bennington College.[22]Amanda Urban was her agent and the novel became a critical and financial success.[23][24]Vanity Fair called Tartt a precocious literary genius, as she was just 29 years old.[25]
Her 2013 novel The Goldfinch stirred reviewers as to whether it was a literary novel, a controversy possibly based on its best-selling status.[25][32][33] The book was adapted for the movie The Goldfinch. Tartt was reportedly paid $3m for the movie rights but parted company with her long-standing agent, Amanda Urban, over the latter's failure to secure Tartt a role in the screenplay writing or wider production.[34] The movie was a critical and commercial failure.[35][36]
Tartt is a convert to Catholicism and contributed an essay, "The spirit and writing in a secular world", to The Novel, Spirituality and Modern Culture (2000). In her essay she wrote that "faith is vital in the process of making my work and in the reasons I am driven to make it."[37] However, Tartt also warned of the danger of writers who impose their beliefs or convictions on their novels. She wrote that writers should "shy from asserting those convictions directly in their work."[37][5]
She has spent about ten years writing each of her novels.[25][38][39]
In 2013, Tartt claimed that she was not a recluse while stressing the freedoms of shutting the door, closing the curtains and not participating in the life of culture.[38]
In 2016, Tartt's cousin, police officer James Lee Tartt, was killed while on duty.[44]
As of 2016, Virginia Living published that Tartt lived with art gallery owner Neal Guma. Both of them studied at Bennington. She and her partner purchased the Charlottesville property back in 1997.[45] Tartt also dedicated her second novel to someone named Neal, although she does not elaborate his identity.
"Sleepytown: A Southern Gothic Childhood, with Codeine", Harper's Magazine 285.1706, July 1992, pp. 60–66
Tartt's great-grandfather gave the five-year-old, for tonsillitis, whiskey, and codeine cough syrup, for two years, when kept home due to tonsillitis, she would read and write poetry.[52]
"Basketball Season" in The Best American Sports Writing, edited and with an introduction by Frank Deford, Houghton Mifflin, 1993
"Team Spirit: Memories of Being a Freshman Cheerleader for the Basketball Team", Harper's Magazine 288.1727, April 1994, pp. 37–40
