Marilynne is a 20th-century American elaboration of Marilyn — itself Mary (Hebrew *Miryam*, "beloved, star of the sea") + Lynn (Welsh "lake"). **Marilynne Robinson (born 1943)** — **American novelist and essayist; her 1980 debut *Housekeeping* won the PEN/Hemingway Award**; she then waited 24 years before publishing her second novel **\*Gilead\* (2004), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005 and was named by *The New York Times* the best novel of the 21st century in their 2024 ranking of the century's books, drawing the vote of 503 literary figures**. **Followed by *Home* (2008, Orange Prize), *Lila* (2014, NBCC Award), and *Jack* (2020) — completing the Gilead tetralogy**. **Barack Obama interviewed her for *The New York Review of Books* in 2015 as among his personal favorite living writers**. **National Humanities Medal (2012)**. **Calvinist Protestant essayist; her *The Death of Adam* (1998) defends Calvinism's intellectual tradition**.
Subject of countless 2024 NYT 100 Best Books of 21st Century retrospectives.
Marilynne reduces to nine — the number of Gilead.