“My parents would drive us to Florida every spring in this big old, rusy Suburban, and we'd collect stuff on the beach for our aquarium back in Ohio; we had this big saltwater aquarium back in Ohio. Every time we found anything, any mollusk, my mom would bring out the guidebook and quiz us on what it was, so that stuff was built in early.”

American novelist and short story writer

Anthony Doerr is an American novelist and short story writer. He came to wide attention with his 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His work spans novels and short fiction, and he is especially known for the success of All the Light We Cannot See. The book brought him broad recognition and established him as a major contemporary American literary voice.