Annie Proulx

Her short story "Brokeback Mountain," which contains a character who is killed in a Wyoming gay-bashing, was published in The New Yorker in 1997, almost exactly one year before the real-life murder of gay Wyoming man Matthew Shepard. Proulx, who lived close to where Shepard was beaten, was called to but not selected for jury duty for the trial of Shepard's murders.
Won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Shipping News.
Supported herself and three sons by writing how-to books. Published her first novel, Postcards (1992), when she was 56.
Surname pronounced "Proo."
BA, University of Vermont (1969); MA, Sir George Williams University (1973)

The people connected with Brokeback Mountain, including me, hoped that, having been nominated for eight Academy Awards, it would get Best Picture as it had at the funny, lively Independent Spirit Awards. We should have known conservative heffalump Academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the Academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - "Crash" a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver.

Full text source: The Guardian newspaper, 11th March 2006

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