OLSEN, TILLIE

OLSEN, TILLIE (1913– ), U.S. author. Born Tillie Lerner in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Russian immigrants, her stature rose steadily over the years and she became regarded as one of America's leading writers. Self-taught, with little formal education, she writes about the world with which she is most intimately familiar – the struggles of working people, particularly women. She was raised in a socialist background and developed her passion for writing as a young girl. In the 1930s she became involved in a variety of political and trade union movements. After dropping out of high school, she was briefly jailed in Kansas City for trying to organize packing-house workers. She then worked full time in various trade unions while writing for left-wing journals. Married in 1945, she thereafter devoted herself to raising her four daughters, while employed in various menial jobs. A novel begun in the 1930s was finished only 40 years later, and her first book, Tell Me a Riddle (1962), a collection of four stories exploring human relationships, was published when she was nearly 50. The title story, published separately in 1961, received the O. Henry Award. It deals with the last months of a terminally ill elderly woman and her attempts to resolve deep-rooted marital conflicts. Another much anthologized story in the collection, "I Stand Here Ironing," explores the relationship of mothers and daughters and the repression of women. As a result of her publication, Olsen began receiving writing fellowships, including grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, and served as a visiting professor at several universities. In 1974, her novel, Yonnondio: From the Thirties was finally published to widespread acclaim. The novel deals with the struggles of a midwestern family during the Depression.   Olsen has also written a biographical and literary commentary of the writer Rebecca Harding Davies who was an early influence on her writing, and a collection of essays, Silences (1978). In her 1981 play I Stand Here Mourning – a monologue – a mother mourns the blighting of her 19-year-old daughter's life. (Susan Strul (2nd ed.)