Harriet Doerr (1910-2002) was born in Pasadena, California, and attended Smith College in 1927, but received her B.A. from Stanford University in 1977, where she was accepted into the Creative Writing Program. She was a Stegner Fellow, received the Transatlantic Review Henfield Foundation Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Doerr’s first novel, Stones for Ibarra, won the 1984 National Book Award for First Work of Fiction, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, the Godal Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Harold D. Vursell Award. Her second novel, Consider This, Señora, was a national bestseller. Doerr’s third and final book, The Tiger in the Grass, was a collection of stories and anecdotal pieces.