THE ESTATE OF HARRIET DOERR

“Although Harriet Doerr had come to writing very late in life, she discovered, as we all did, that she was an almost flawless lens, with a capacity to make a world out of the fragmentary images she had caught.” — Wallage Stegner

A granddaughter of California railroad magnate and noted collector of art and rare books, Henry Edwards Huntington, Harriet Green Huntington grew up in a Pasadena, California, family that encouraged intellectual endeavors. She enrolled in Smith College in 1927, transferred to Stanford University the following year, and left school to marry. Harriet and Albert Doerr were married for 42 years, had two children, and lived half their time together in a small Mexican mining town, which would provide Doerr with subject and setting for much of her writing.

Following her husband's death from leukemia in 1973, Doerr returned to California; at the suggestion of her son, she decided to finish her education. She enrolled once again at Stanford, took her BA degree in European history, and there began writing, with sufficient success to earn a Stegner Fellowship in 1979. She soon began publishing short stories. She was 74 when her debut novel, STONES FOR IBARRA, was published; it received the American Book Award for First Work of Fiction, and was translated into ten languages and published in twelve countries abroad. Her other works include: TIGER IN THE GRASS, CONSIDER THIS, SEÑORA.

She died in 2002 at the age of 92.