born Oct. 25, 1941, Minneapolis, Minn., U.S.
U.S. writer.
Tyler worked as a bibliographer and librarian before settling in Baltimore in 1967 and beginning to write full-time. Her novels, comedies of manner marked by compassionate wit and precise details of domestic life, include Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985; film, 1988), Breathing Lessons (1988, Pulitzer Prize), and A Patchwork Planet (1998). Several focus on eccentric middle-class people living in chaotic, disunited families in Baltimore.