Author Guide · Memoir, Faith & Craft
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When Anne Lamott’s brother was ten, he sat at the kitchen table of the family cabin in Bolinas, close to tears over a report on birds he had had three months to write and was due the next day. Their father, the writer Kenneth Lamott, put an arm around him and said: “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” Lamott, born in San Francisco in 1954, made that the title of her 1994 book on writing, still her best known. She began with novels, the first drawn from her father’s brain cancer, quit drinking in 1986, and found a far larger readership with nonfiction about single motherhood, faith and getting through bad days. She has published 21 books, seven of them novels. This guide covers her 11 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 11 key books · 1980–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Anne Lamott is best known for Bird by Bird (1994), her book on writing, and the memoirs Operating Instructions (1993) and Traveling Mercies (1999). She has also written seven novels, from Hard Laughter (1980) to Imperfect Birds (2010), and short books of essays such as Help, Thanks, Wow (2012) and Somehow (2024). Start with Bird by Bird, which is about writing and also about her life.
Where to Start with Anne Lamott
If you want her defining book
→ Bird by Bird (1994) — writing advice built around her own life.
If you want her writing on faith
→ Traveling Mercies (1999) — essays on how she came to Christianity.
If you want her memoir of early motherhood
→ Operating Instructions (1993) — the journal of her son’s first year.
If you want her fiction
→ Crooked Little Heart (1997) — the middle book of the Rosie novels.
11 Anne Lamott Books, in Order
Hard Laughter
Her first novel grew out of short pieces she wrote after her father, the novelist Kenneth Lamott, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1975: a family living with a father’s illness. He read a rough draft before he died; she wrote the first and last chapters afterwards. Anne Tyler, in The New York Times Book Review, called it “a moving and strangely joyful book”.
Rosie
The first of three novels about the Ferguson family. Elizabeth, a 38-year-old widow in a San Francisco suburb whose husband died in a car accident, is drinking more and more, and her eight-year-old daughter, Rosie, is what keeps her going. Kirkus called it “a sunny, strong-backed novel”. The story continues in Crooked Little Heart and Imperfect Birds.
Operating Instructions
A diary of the first year of her son Sam, born in August 1989, whom she raised alone. In the same year her closest friend, Pammy, was diagnosed with cancer, and the book follows her illness and death alongside the nappies and the sleeplessness. It outsold all her novels and led to a regular slot on National Public Radio.
Bird by Bird
Her guide to writing, named after her father’s advice to her brother. It covers short assignments, “shitty first drafts”, perfectionism, jealousy and publication, mixed with stories from her own career and from teaching writing classes. It is her best-known book and a New York Times bestseller, and gave its title to Freida Lee Mock’s 1999 documentary about her, Bird by Bird with Annie.
Crooked Little Heart
The sequel to Rosie. Rosie, now thirteen, is a gifted competitive tennis player who fears losing more than she enjoys winning, starts to cheat, and keeps the secret that her doubles partner, Simone, is pregnant. It was nominated for the 1999 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Traveling Mercies
Autobiographical essays on how she came to Christianity: childhood brushes with religion in other people’s families, years of drinking and drugs, getting sober, and the small, largely African-American church she joined. Many pieces began as her “Word by Word” column for Salon. It was a New York Times bestseller.
Blue Shoe
Mattie Ryder, recently separated and raising two young children on very little money, finds a small blue rubber shoe, the kind that comes out of a gumball machine, among things her late father left in his car. With her brother she pieces together what it means, and comes to see her difficult mother and her father differently. Mattie is the first of Lamott’s protagonists to be a practising Christian.
Imperfect Birds
The third Rosie novel, told from both Rosie’s and Elizabeth’s points of view. Rosie, now seventeen, has good grades and a secret life of drinking and drugs; Elizabeth, sober for years, and her husband, James, disagree over whether to meet the lies with tough love or unconditional love. It is her most recent novel.
Help, Thanks, Wow
A short book arguing that most prayer comes down to three words: help, when we are stuck; thanks, when things go right; and wow, at beauty or surprise. It reached the New York Times bestseller list in 2012.
Almost Everything
Short essays, written in her sixties, setting down what she says she has learned about staying hopeful: about family, food, writing, faith, forgiveness and death, in the same mix of jokes and confession as her earlier essay books.
Somehow
Essays on love in its ordinary forms: between parents and children, between friends, within a congregation, and late in life. It was a number-one New York Times bestseller.
In What Order to Read Anne Lamott
Only the three Rosie novels need to be read in order: Rosie (1983), Crooked Little Heart (1997) and Imperfect Birds (2010) follow the same girl from childhood to the end of school. Everything else stands alone.
Her nonfiction does trace a life, though. Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird come from the early 1990s, when she was a newly sober single mother; Traveling Mercies and the faith books that follow it (Plan B, Grace (Eventually)) go back over how she got there; and the short essay books from Help, Thanks, Wow onwards are written from later life, as a grandmother and, from 2019, a wife.
A reading path
1. Bird by Bird (1994)
2. Operating Instructions (1993)
3. Traveling Mercies (1999)
4. Crooked Little Heart (1997)
5. Somehow (2024)
Everything Else Anne Lamott Published
Beyond the 11 key books: 10 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Novels
2
2 books · 1985–1989
- 1985Joe Jonesher third novel, set around a restaurant
- 1989All New Peopleher fourth novel
Nonfiction and essays
7
7 books · 2005–2021
- 2005Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faitha sequel to Traveling Mercies
- 2007Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faiththe third of her faith collections
- 2012Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Sonthe first year of her grandson, Jax, written with her son
- 2013Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repairon finding meaning after loss
- 2014Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Graceessays
- 2017Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercyessays on mercy
- 2021Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courageessays, a New York Times bestseller
Co-written
1
1 book · 2026
- 2026Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences36 rules for sentences, with essays by both authors
The years · 1954–2026
Quick facts about Anne Lamott
- Known for
- Writing about writing, faith, sobriety and single motherhood with candour and jokes, above all in Bird by Bird (1994).
- 1954
- Born in San Francisco
- 1980
- Hard Laughter, her first novel
- 1994
- Bird by Bird
- 2010
- California Hall of Fame
- 2026
- Good Writing, with Neal Allen
- Born
- 10 April 1954, San Francisco; daughter of the writer Kenneth Lamott
- Education
- Goucher College, Maryland, 1971–1973; left to write
- Sober
- Since 1986
- Honours
- Guggenheim Fellowship (1985); California Hall of Fame (2010)
- Family
- Son Sam, born 1989; married Neal Allen in 2019
- Columns
- “Word by Word” for Salon; earlier, book reviews for Mademoiselle
The red mark is 1994: Bird by Bird, her book on writing and life.
How Anne Lamott Writes: Bird by Bird
Her method is the one in her title: break the job into pieces small enough to do. In Bird by Bird she tells writers to aim for “short assignments”, to accept “shitty first drafts”, and to treat perfectionism as “the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft”. The book itself is built that way, as short chapters that can each be read on their own.
Her nonfiction is confessional and funny at once. She writes about drinking, bulimia, envy and her own bad behaviour in the first person, and then turns to faith without dropping the jokes. Many of her essays began as columns, for Salon and later elsewhere, which is why her books tend to be collections of short pieces rather than long arguments.
Her novels stay close to home: families in Northern California, alcoholism and its effect on children, mothers and daughters. The three Rosie books follow one family for almost thirty years of her writing life. For writers with the same mix of candour, faith and humour, from Mary Karr to Nadia Bolz-Weber, see Authors like Anne Lamott.
Watch
Anne Lamott: 12 truths from life and writing
Lamott’s talk at TED2017 in Vancouver, on twelve things she knows for sure, from family and grace to writing “shitty first drafts”.
Frequently asked questions about Anne Lamott’s books
How many books has Anne Lamott written?
Twenty-one under her name: seven novels, thirteen books of nonfiction and essays, and Good Writing (2026), co-written with her husband, Neal Allen. Eleven of them are the key books on this page; the other ten are in the list below them.
What are Anne Lamott’s books in order?
The key books are Hard Laughter (1980), Rosie (1983), Operating Instructions (1993), Bird by Bird (1994), Crooked Little Heart (1997), Traveling Mercies (1999), Blue Shoe (2002), Imperfect Birds (2010), Help, Thanks, Wow (2012), Almost Everything (2018) and Somehow (2024).
What is the best Anne Lamott book to start with?
Bird by Bird, even if you do not write: it is as much about her life as about writing. If you are more interested in her writing on faith, start with Traveling Mercies.
What is Anne Lamott’s most famous book?
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994). Its title comes from her father’s advice to her ten-year-old brother, stuck on a school report on birds: “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
What does “shitty first drafts” mean?
It is the title of a chapter in Bird by Bird. Lamott argues that good writers get to good work by writing bad first drafts quickly and fixing them later, and that perfectionism is what stops people starting.
Is Anne Lamott a religious writer?
Yes, though not a conventional one. She is a Christian and writes about her faith in Traveling Mercies, Plan B, Grace (Eventually) and Help, Thanks, Wow, alongside her recovery from addiction and her progressive politics.
Are Rosie, Crooked Little Heart and Imperfect Birds a series?
Yes. The three novels follow Rosie Ferguson and her mother, Elizabeth: Rosie as a child in Rosie (1983), at thirteen in Crooked Little Heart (1997) and at seventeen in Imperfect Birds (2010). Read them in that order.
Is there a film about Anne Lamott?
Yes: Bird by Bird with Annie: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott (1999), a documentary directed by Freida Lee Mock. None of her own books has been adapted for the screen.
Has Anne Lamott won any awards?
She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985 and was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2010. Her novel Crooked Little Heart was nominated for the 1999 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Is Anne Lamott still alive?
Yes. She was born on 10 April 1954 in San Francisco and lives in Marin County, California. In March 2026 she published Good Writing with her husband, Neal Allen, whom she married in 2019.
Who is Anne Lamott?
Anne Lamott, born in 1954 in San Francisco, is an American writer known for Bird by Bird (1994), one of the best-known books on writing, Operating Instructions (1993), about her son’s first year, and essay collections on faith such as Traveling Mercies (1999). She has also written seven novels.
How old is Anne Lamott?
She was born on 10 April 1954, which makes her 72 in 2026.
Where does Anne Lamott live?
She lives in Marin County, California, north of San Francisco, in the town of Fairfax.
Is Anne Lamott a Christian?
Yes, though not a Catholic. She has described a conversion in the mid-1980s, when she was newly sober, and she is a member of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin City. She calls her faith irreverent, and it runs through books such as Traveling Mercies.
Is Anne Lamott married?
Yes. She married the writer Neal Allen on 13 April 2019 in Fairfax, California. Their joint book, Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, came out in March 2026.
Who was Anne Lamott’s father?
The writer Kenneth Lamott. He died of brain cancer in the late 1970s, and his illness informed her first novel, Hard Laughter (1980).
Who is the father of Anne Lamott’s son?
She has not named him publicly. Her son, Sam, was born in 1989, and she raised him as a single mother, as she describes in Operating Instructions.
Why does Anne Lamott have dreadlocks?
In a 2005 interview she said she had worn dreadlocks for about eleven years, calling them “the greatest freedom” and saying it was the most beautiful she had ever felt.
What is Why I Hate Mother’s Day by Anne Lamott about?
It is an essay published in Salon on 8 May 2010, in which she argues that the holiday celebrates the idea that mothers are superior to other women and leaves out women who are not mothers and people who are grieving.
Footnotes
- Anne Lamott — Wikipedia
- Lamott, Anne 1954– — Encyclopedia.com
- Anne Lamott — Dublin Literary Award
- Good Writing — Penguin Random House
- Bird by Bird — The Marginalian
- Bird by Bird: Context — SparkNotes
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
Also on the shelfAuthors Like Anne Lamott
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (1994)
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