A novelist and writer of non-fiction, Anne Lamott was born in San Francisco in 1954. She wrote for the newspaper at Goucher College for the two years she attended. She wrote her first novel, *Hard Laughter* for her father after he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Howard Freeman's term "particularism" is aptly applied to her narrative nonfiction. Lamott draws on her own life and experiences in her writing, covering topics such as alcoholism, depression, being a single mother, Christianity, and the intersection between them.