Idaho Author Makes TIME Magazine’s ‘Most Influential’ List

A writer that was born in Sandpoint has something in common with Ariana Grande, Leonardo DiCaprio, Melissa McCarthy, and Adele.  She's one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People.

Author Marilynne Robinson is 72 now, and was born in Sandpoint.  She continues to pile up the honors, including becoming one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, joining the ranks of Hilary Clinton, Donald Trump, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Charlize Theron.

Marilynne Robinson put out her first novel in 1980, called Housekeeping, and it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  The book is set in a town called Fingerbone, ID, which is noticeably similar to Sandpoint.

Boise Weekly points out that over the course of her career she won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (twice) and the National Humanities Medal, among others.  She also wrote the novels Gilead, Home and Lila.  President Obama said in an interview last year that Gilead was one of his favorites. Now she is on that "most influential" list with President Obama.

TIME comes up with the list based on the "people, ideas and places that have shaped the world," and Marilynne Robinson has very quietly done that.  It's probably just the way she likes it.

Congrats Marilynne.  It's an impressive story, through fiction and real life.