安妮·迪拉德 Annie Dillard，作傢、詩人、博物學者、語言大師。1945年齣生於美國賓夕法尼亞州匹茲堡一個富裕的傢庭，自幼喜好閱讀，在父母影響下，從鋼琴、繪畫與舞蹈課，到采集岩石與昆蟲，她的童年交織著無窮的創造力與對環境的探索。1968年，她以題為《瓦爾登湖 與梭羅》的論文畢業於弗吉尼亞霍林斯大學，奠定一生的寫作方嚮。

1971年，在經曆瞭一場幾乎緻命的肺炎之後，迪拉德在弗吉尼亞州的聽客溪生活瞭一年，深入體驗生命。這一經曆成就瞭《聽客溪的朝聖》(Pilgrim At Tinker Creek，又譯為溪畔天問)，這本書使她在二十九歲便獲得普利策奬，在美國文壇激起巨大的迴響，影響力至今不衰。

迪拉德著述頗豐，是《The Atlantic》《Harpers》等雜誌的專欄作傢，其作品體裁涉及散文、詩歌、小說和書信，皆直指生命的核心。作品有《現世》 《教頑石說話》 《神聖的堅實》 《文字生涯》《與中國作傢相會》《美國童年》等。愛德華·艾比(Edward Abbey) 認為她是梭羅的“真正傳人”。

National Bestseller

"Beautifully written and delightfully strange--. As earthy as it is sublime, For the Time Being is, in the truest sense, an eye- opener."-- Daily News

From Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and one of the most compelling writers of our time, comes For the Time Being , her most profound narrative to date. With her keen eye, penchant for paradox, and yearning for truth, Dillard renews our ability to discover wonder in life's smallest--and often darkest--corners.

Why do we exist? Where did we come from? How can one person matter? Dillard searches for answers in a powerful array of images: pictures of bird-headed dwarfs in the standard reference of human birth defects; ten thousand terra-cotta figures fashioned for a Chinese emperor in place of the human court that might have followed him into death; the paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin crossing the Gobi Desert; the dizzying variety of clouds. Vivid, eloquent, haunting, For the Time Being evokes no less than the terrifying grandeur of all that remains tantalizingly and troublingly beyond our understanding.

"Stimulating, humbling, original--. [Dillard] illuminate[s] the human perspective of the world, past, present and future, and the individual's relatively inconsequential but ever so unique place in it."-- Rocky Mountain News