Anne Rivers Siddons | |
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Born | Sybil Anne Rivers January 9, 1936 Fairburn, Georgia, United States |
Occupation | Novelist |
Nationality | American |
Period | 1975–present |
Genre | Southern literature |
Anne Rivers Siddons (born January 9, 1936) is an American novelist who writes stories set in the southern United States.
Born Sybil Anne Rivers in Atlanta, Georgia, she was raised in Fairburn, Georgia, and attended Auburn University, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority. While at Auburn she wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman, that favored integration. The university administration attempted to suppress the column, and ultimately fired her, and the column garnered national attention. She later became a senior editor for Atlanta magazine. At the age of thirty she married Heyward Siddons,who died April 8, 2014. In 1991, she received an honorary degree in Doctor of Letters from Oglethorpe University. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and spends summers in Maine.
Peachtree Road, set in Atlanta, was a bestselling novel described as "the Southern novel for our generation" by Pat Conroy. More than a million copies are in print. In 1989 her book Heartbreak Hotel became a movie titled Heart of Dixie, which starred Ally Sheedy, Virginia Madsen, Phoebe Cates, Treat Williams, Kyle Secor and Peter Berg.
Siddons's book The House Next Door was adapted for a made-for-television movie that aired in 2006 on Lifetime Television, starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Colin Ferguson, and Lara Flynn Boyle. The film tells the story of a woman who is drawn to a home filled with an evil presence that preys on its inhabitants’ weaknesses.