Born April 30, 1945 as Meta Annie Doak in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she attended the all-girls Hollins College in Virginia where as a sophomore she married her writing professor, the poet R. H. W. Dillard. She won the Pulitzer Prize (non-fiction) in 1975 with her first book of prose, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which is an extended meditation on her observations of the natural world. Some have called it a work of mysticism or theology. This combination of observations on nature and philosophical explorations is also present in several of her other books, including For the Time Being and Holy the Firm.