Annie Dillard, Pulitzer-winning author of 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,' dies at 81

Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author and essayist renowned for her poetic explorations of nature, love, spirituality and the art of writing in the “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” “The Maytrees” and numerous other works, has died. She was 81.Her literary agent, Rob McQuilkin, said Dillard died Tuesday of natural causes at her home in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Starting in the mid-1970s, Dillard completed a wide range of books, from the poetry collection “Tickets for a Prayer Wheel” to what she would call the “jolly journalism” of “Encounters with Chinese Writers” to the novel of marriage, “The Maytrees,” a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award in 2008. Seven years later, President Barack Obama presented her with a National Humanities Medal for her “profound reflections on human life and nature.”Born Meta Ann Doak, she was a Pittsburgh native who in the 1987 memoir “An American Childhood” looked back at her early years and on her uniquely curious mind. She was raised by nonconf