Ann Patchett was born in Los Angeles in 1963 and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, at age six; she still lives in Nashville today. Patchett attended Sarah Lawrence College for her bachelor of arts degree, and she first began publishing her fiction during this time. She then attended the University of Iowa for her master’s degree. From early on in her career, Patchett’s writing has been celebrated and awarded, winning her a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994.

The story of Run originally came to Patchett in a dream she had while working on her fourth novel, Bel Canto (2001). In an interview with Jonathan Burnham, Patchett says that, for her, Run is about politics: “a father who is trying to raise one of his three sons to greatness” (“A Conversation with Ann Patchett,” frontmatter in Run. Harper: New York, 2007, pp. 4-10, 5). However, the novel is also about family, she asserts, particularly how family values should be considered in relation to one’s country and local community, not only in relation to one’s blood relatives. This led Patchett to set Run in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. She chose this setting, firstly, for its familiarity to her, but she also selected Boston because it was “on the cusp of the very wealthy and the very poor” (5).