Marianne Wiggins Biography – Marianne Wiggins Wiki
Marianne Wiggins is an American author. She is noted for the unusual characters and storylines in her novels. According to The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English, Wiggins writes with “a bold intelligence and an ear for hidden comedy.” She has won a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2004 for her novel Evidence of Things Unseen.
In 2016 she suffered a stroke, leaving her unable to read or write. She regained those abilities and completed her novel Properties of Thirst over the course of several years. She was assisted by her daughter Lara Porzak. The author was a resident of Los Angeles, California, where she was in the English department of the University of Southern California since 2005.
I have lived a really interesting life,” she told Pamela J. Johnson in July 2006. “I haven’t lived it so I can excavate material for my writing.” She added, “I’m a novelist. I don’t have those muscles. It’s not about me. It’s about what I’ve imagined. It’s the universal voice that I want to move forward. That’s my natural voice. — Marianne Wiggins, June 2006
She is the author of eight novels, including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award (2003). She has won a Whiting Award in 1989, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the 1989 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for John Dollar, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She lives in Venice, California. She graduated from Manheim Township High School.
Marianne Wiggins Age
She was born on November 8, 1947, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States.
Marianne Wiggins Husband
She was a resident of London for 16 years, and for brief periods in Paris, Brussels, and Rome. In January 1988, she married novelist Salman Rushdie in London. On February 14, 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a Fatwa ordering Rushdie’s assassination for alleged blasphemy in his book, The Satanic Verses. Although Wiggins had told Rushdie only five days prior that she wished to end their marriage, she nevertheless went into hiding along with him. In 1993, the two divorced.
On August 12, 2022, while about to begin a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, about the United States being a safe haven for writers facing persecution, Rushdie was attacked by a man who rushed up onto the stage and stabbed him repeatedly in the neck. The attacker was pulled away before being taken into custody; Rushdie was airlifted to the hospital where he is undergoing surgery. Attendees critiqued the lax security measures in place. In recent years, Rushdie traveled without a security detail. PEN America noted that the attack has no precedence in American history. The New York Times reported that this incident sent “ripples of ‘shock and horror’ through the literary world”.
Her first marriage was to Brian Porzak in 1965, with whom she had one daughter. The couple divorced in 1970.
Marianne Wiggins Children
She had one child with her first husband, her daughter, Lara Porzak.
Marianne Wiggins Family
Her family was of Greek and Scots ancestry. Her father, a farmer, preached in a conservative Christian church founded by her grandfather. She married at 17, just after graduating from Manheim Township High School, and gave birth to a daughter, Lara, whom she brought up in Martha’s Vineyard. Her daughter Lara is now a renowned photographer in Los Angeles according to Alchetron.
