Audrey Thomas's fiction is largely and conspicuously autobiographical. It tends to be woman-centered, although sometimes Thomas adopts a male persona. Her work is often thought of as experimental, mainly because of a fondness for discontinuous narration, word play, fragmented narrators, and the incorporation of such matter as etymologies, nursery rhymes, advertisements, and recipes. The fiction is highly allusive, much given to play with literary references, most of them widely accessible. Thomas functions both as a collector or connoisseur of the fragments of external reality which interest her, and as a custodian of a precarious inner reality.

Audrey Thomas was born to Donald Earle Callahan, a teacher, and Frances Corbett Callahan in Binghamton, New York, on 17 November 1935. She received a B.A. from Smith College in 1957; during 1955-1956 she was a nonmatriculating student at St. Andrew's University in Scotland. In December 1958 Audrey Grace Callahan married sculptor and art teacher...