I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books . . . so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes.

Encounters with Chinese Writers
Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984) is a work of journalism. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Its topics mirror the various chapters of the book and include "birth sand China clouds numbers Israel encounters thinker evil and now.

Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. She has publiAnnie Dillardd works of poetry essays prose and literary criticism as well as two novels and one memoir.