The waiting game: Why Donna Tartt’s silence is part of the myth

Some authors tour, tweet, podcast, publish—and then there is Donna Tartt. Three novels in more than three decades, no confirmed interviews since 2016, and not a whisper of what she might be writing now. And yet, her presence is everywhere. On BookTok, in dark academia mood boards, in conversations about obsessive friendships and beautiful prose and the kind of writing that insists you slow down and read every word.

It is a peculiar kind of fame: literary, elusive, enduring. And it begs the question—how has Tartt managed to become one of the most recognisable cult authors of our time by doing, ostensibly, so little?

The death of genre? Why writers are dismantling old labels

It used to be so simple. You wrote a crime novel, or a romance, or a dystopia. Bookshop shelves were helpful about such things: spine out, genre in. Literary fiction sat in its elegant corner, cool, aloof, unbothered by the commercial hustle elsewhere. Genre fiction was the grafter, busy, popular, and a little bit suspect.

But something is shifting. Writers are slipping past those borders, and readers are following them. In fact, they’re relishing the trespass. Literary novels are embracing dragons and time travel. Crime writers are reaching for unreliable narrators and experimental prose. Romance authors are crafting love stories that refuse tidy arcs. In 2025, the lines feel not so much blurred as beside the point.