Tracy Kidder

Who is Tracy Kidder?

John Tracy Kidder is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer of the 1981 nonfiction narrative The Soul of a New Machine, about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. He also received much praise for his biography of Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Kidder is considered a literary journalist because of the strong story line and personal voice in his writing. He has cited as his writing influences John McPhee, A. J. Liebling, and George Orwell. In a 1984 interview he said, "McPhee has been my model. He's the most elegant of all the journalists writing today, I think."

Kidder wrote in a 1994 essay, "In fiction, believability may have nothing to do with reality or even plausibility. It has everything to do with those things in nonfiction. I think that the nonfiction writer's fundamental job is to make what is true believable."