Laura Hillenbrand

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Laura Hillenbrand (born May 15, 1967) is an American author of books and journal articles.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001) and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010), her two best-selling nonfiction books, and both were adapted for film.

Her writing style is different from New Journalism, with "verbal pyrotechnics" being phased out in favour of a more centered focus on the story itself. Hillenbrand was sick in college and was unable to complete her degree.

In an award-winning essay, A Sudden Illness, published in The New Yorker in 2003, she related to her experience.

When she was in pain from that illness, she wrote her books.

"To me your tale – fighting your illness – is as convincing as his (Louis Zamperini's) story," Bob Schieffer said in a Laura Hillenbrand interview in 2014.

Personal life

Hillenbrand was born in Fairfax, Virginia, the daughter and youngest of four children of Elizabeth Marie Dwyer, a child psychologist, and Bernard Francis Hillenbrand, a lobbyist who became a minister.

Hillenbrand spent a significant portion of her childhood riding the hills of her father's Sharpsburg, Maryland farm, screaming over the hills. Come On Seabiscuit (1963), her mother's most popular childhood book, was Come On Seabiscuit (1963). "I read it to death, my little paperback copy," she says. She studied at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, but she was forced to leave before graduation because of persistent exhaust syndrome, which has plagued her ever since.

She lived in Washington, D.C., before onset of the illness in late 2015. She never left her house due to the illness. In 2006, Hillenbrand married Borden Flanagan, a professor of public policy at American University and her college sweetheart. They married in 2014 after 28 years as a couple, living in separate houses. In 2015, the couple's divorce was finalized.

At her Georgetown home in January 2015, she was interviewed by James Rosen of Fox News for a long time; Rosen talked about how she had written the book Unbroken; she noted her improved health as the interview had been postponed several times since 2010 due to her poor health. In the interview, she shared how Louis Zamperini, her mother, inspired her in confronting her own life challenges amid their many phone calls. She expressed inexoration. Zamperini told her that she had read her essay about her own illness, which was partially why he opened up about his illness in the hopes of learning about what she had endured. She said that her primary literary influences were writers of fiction, including Hemingway, Tolstoy, Jane Austen, but that their command of language is what led her to re-read books by those writers.

Hillenbrand made a trip to Oregon in fall 2015, her first time out of Washington, D.C., which resulted in debilitating vertigo. Since that trip, she has lived in Oregon. She and her new boyfriend rode around the country, stopping often along the way to see the country. She admits that going to "see America" was risky, but that her planning resulted in a fruitful trip and a lot of joy from doing activities long absent from her life. This was made possible by a focused plan over two years to increase her travel enjoyment without evoking the vertigo. The disease is not cured, but her endurance is boosted.

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Career

Hillenbrand's first book was the acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), a nonfiction account of the career of the great racehorse Seabiscuit, for which she won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2001. She says she was compelled to tell the story because she "found fascinating people living a story that was improbable, breathtaking and ultimately more satisfying than any story [she'd] ever come across." She first told the story through an essay, "Four Good Legs Between Us", that was published in American Heritage magazine, and the feedback was positive, so she decided to proceed with a full-length book. The book received positive reviews for the storytelling and research. It was made into the film Seabiscuit, nominated for Best Picture of 2003 at the 76th Academy Awards.

Hillenbrand's second book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010), was a biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini. The book's film adaptation is called Unbroken (2014).

These two books have dominated the best seller lists in both hardback and paperback. Combined, they have sold more than 10 million copies, which was reported in 2016 to have increased to over 13 million copies.

Hillenbrand's essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Equus magazine, American Heritage, The Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times, The Backstretch, Turf and Sport Digest, and other publications. Her 1998 American Heritage article on the horse Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing.

Hillenbrand is a co-founder of Operation International Children.

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